


Call It Off

by deciding



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2011-2012 NHL Season, Chance Meetings, Drama, F/M, Musicians, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-08
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-01-31 00:47:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 59,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12664869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deciding/pseuds/deciding
Summary: Some girls want to save a man. Some girls want to be the reason a man changes. Some girls want to be taken care of. Some girls want to settle down. Some girls want forever.Delia is not one of those girls, and this isn't going to end well.





	1. Jasper Avenue

It was just one of those off nights. It was the kind I was hoping not to have for the duration of our time in this God forsaken city. But that was just silly wishful thinking. Rich had been my best friend for the last seven years, and up until six months ago, my boyfriend for the last two years. We were in a transition phase now, going back to a relationship of just friends. Tonight was one of the nights where we had difficulty on our journey of getting back there, just three days into our extended stay in a new city. Under normal circumstances, people in our situation would move on separately. They didn’t have to keep hanging out. They didn’t even have to be civil to each other. But our circumstances were different. There was more on the line. We were bandmates.

My friends and I started a band when we were 16. Rich and I shared vocal duties. He played keyboard and sometimes percussion. I always played bass guitar. We made it out of our local coffee shop, out of the skatepark, out of the community hall, out of Victoria. My three closest friends and I—we went on tour with our other friends throughout Canada. We added another band member along the way. We managed to go on tour through a good portion of the United States. We hadn’t been home for more than a few months at a time since we were 19, and we were happy. Somewhere along the way Rich and I decided we would be even happier if we were together. And for a long time we were.

My breakup with Rich was amicable. That was probably what made it harder. I didn’t have any ill will toward him. I just knew that our relationship, as a couple, it stopped working. We both knew it. We probably held on for longer than we should have just because it was so comfortable. But breaking up still sucked. It still hurt. And I knew in my heart Rich and I weren’t just returning to friendship for the sake of the band. It was so _Tragic Kingdom_. We still needed each other. We relied on each other. But that didn’t mean, post-breakup, there weren’t times when we wanted to strangle each other.

Tonight, for instance, he wanted to change venues and go to a house party. I wanted to stay where we were so we didn’t look like assholes the next morning, when we had to spend the whole day working on a demo. Neither of us wanted to budge.

We were in the very early stages of putting out a new album. Our producer, a transplant Californian who was actually a Canadian, promised to record our album at a 60% rate of his normal studio fees. There was one condition: we had to record the album in the new studio he’d finished building over the summer. In Edmonton.

Grant, our producer, lived and produced in LA for most of the year but a vacation home on the prairies of Alberta turned into more when he realized its potential. Grant bought an acreage property on the outskirts of town, in nearby Sherwood Park. It was a tiny old ranch, one of the few pieces of land so close to Edmonton proper that hadn’t been developed into one of the newer Sherwood Park subdivision-like communities. Over the last few summers, he’d taken to the task of completely insulating and heating the barn, then turning it into a multi-room recording studio. Having finally completed his labor of love, Grant was excited and eager to record a whole album basically in his own home. Plus, his wife was six months pregnant—they weren’t heading southward until after their baby was born.

My band and I had just finished a small gig at a bar in downtown Edmonton, a 25-minute drive from Grant’s place, Prairie Barn Studios. We intended to stay busy and active throughout the process of recording our new album. Whether we were in Los Angeles or Edmonton, we wanted to play a couple of our songs for an audience at least once a week, no matter if they responded or not. Playing our music live was our lifeblood.

Once our gear had been loaded back into the tour van, and once I’d argued with Rich for a couple of minutes, I took a seat at the bar, frustrated. We’d grown up in Victoria and moved to Vancouver shortly after we graduated from high school. Either way, Edmonton was a pretty long way from home and since we were only temporary residents for eleven weeks, of course we were travelling as a band. If Rich wanted to leave to go to a party, with our three other bandmates and our van, and if I was stubborn enough to stay where I was, I was going to have to figure out a way back to the ranch on my own.

And I _was_ stubborn enough. It was one of those nights.

Jack, the bartender that we’d met earlier in the evening, produced my small canvas backpack—which doubled as my purse—from under his side of the bar once I sat down in front of him. He nodded when I smiled my thanks. I unzipped the front pocket and pulled out my two drink tickets. Earlier in the night, before the live music had started, he’d handed them out to all of the bands that were getting stage time.

I glanced at the person beside me. He’d pulled his elbow in toward his chest when I sat down and started cluttering the bar top, as if he didn’t want to impose on my personal space, even if I was taking over some of his. He was too close for me to see any distinct features out of the corner of my eye. I saw large knuckles nursing a beer. That didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“Can I get a beer—Kokanee—and a whiskey sour?” I asked Jack.

“You got it,” he answered and went to work, sweeping my drink tickets off the bar.

The Kokanee appeared in front of me quickly. Jack slid my cocktail across the bar once he’d mixed it. The friction of the wooden surface stopped it right at my wrist without spilling. I wondered to myself if he’d gone to bartending school and if they taught any physics there for him to get that skill down perfectly.

It was the first night in a couple of weeks since I’d last sung in front of an audience and the sour in my whiskey felt good going down my throat with my first sip. I sat silently, facing the neon Corona Extra sign on the brick wall, while I drank and wondered how I was going to get back to the band’s digs.

Sherwood Park wasn’t the easiest place to get to without a car. It was a Wednesday, which meant that there was transit access between the hamlet and the city, but only during peak hours. I could take a cab, which would cost me about half a month’s worth of my savings for my whole stay in Alberta. More practically, I could just text Parker, the drummer of my band, and designated driver for the night, and ask him for the address of wherever they were. Surely the party was within city limits, and maybe by the time I got there on the bus the guys would be ready to pile into our van and call it a night. Of course, if Rich was drunk, we would probably argue again.

The whiskey was polished off and I was halfway through my beer when I was disturbed from my own thoughts. “Can I buy you another drink?”

It was the guy to my right, the one with the wide knuckles. I turned my head sideways, facing him. It was dark in the bar. His eyes were light. He was one of those “guy’s guys”—classically handsome, well built, probably enjoyed fishing trips on statutory holidays. He probably had a RRSP. He was a little bit lumberjack and a little bit clean cut: a good portion of his face was covered in stubble that looked to be the beginning of a successful beard, no visible tattoos or piercings, and very run-of-the-mill short hair. He wasn’t the kind of guy that usually offered to buy a drink for a girl like me. Not that I was unconfident (or overconfident, for that matter) about any of my features, but guys like him usually went for the girls that were on trend and legs for days.

I smirked. This could be fun.

“What if I want to do shots?” I asked.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Then I guess I’ll buy you shots. Whatever you want. But no more Kokanee, okay? Kokanee sucks.”

My laugh was immediate. It wasn’t that I loved the brand of beer I’d ordered twenty minutes earlier, but it was so common throughout all of British Columbia that it was the standard to me. It might have even been the first beer I ever tried in my first experience of underage drinking back in high school. If I’d taken a moment to think about what kind of beer I actually _wanted_ to drink, I probably would have gone with some sort of amber lager.

“You’re not going to drink with me?” I wondered.

“Now who’s going to make sure you make it home safely if I get drunk with you?” he replied to my question with a question of his own.

I smirked. “Wait, you don’t even know my name and you already want to take me home?”

He chuckled. It was a deep, rumbling sound. “I never said that. Getting you home safely and taking you home are two different things.”

My smirk turned into an honest smile. I’d found my ride home. I motioned Jack over.

My hero spoke again. “I’m Ben, by the way.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ben,” I shook the large palm that he extended to me and briefly got a closer look at his wide knuckles, too. “I’m Delia.”

He was lying about the shots. He did them with me. We did three tequila shots each and I felt calm wash over me, forgetting that I’d even been angry when I first sat down. I did most of the talking after that. I felt like I talked his ear off. He smiled a lot and nodded his head in agreement, or to show that he understood whatever I was hammering on about, about tour and my favorite cities to stop in. He didn’t add much to the conversation but he was a great listener.

After I told him about how being in a band on the road, we had to rely on the kindness of strangers for the majority of our alcohol consumption, and that I could never turn down a free drink, Ben stopped me. “I don’t think you should get drunk tonight if I’m drinking with you.”

I knew what he was thinking and he was right. I was short and curvy in the right places, a pretty small girl, and the Patrón was on top of the cocktail I’d already had. A few more shots and I would be on my way to a hangover in the morning.

“Should we get out of here?” I half-asked and half-suggested.

Ben nodded and produced a credit card from the wallet that came from his back pocket. I gathered the contents of my backpack and strolled outside. It was a cool night, similar to the previous few nights that my band and I had been in town, but thankfully there was no strong breeze. The hum of chatter could be heard along Jasper Avenue, bar and lounge patios still open in the late September air. I wondered where Ben had parked. Parking downtown in any sizeable city had to be a hassle, even in the middle of the work week.

Behind me, a door opened and I heard sounds of the place I’d just come: clinking glasses and billiards balls. Ben was much taller standing beside me than I thought he would be. He was probably a whole foot taller than I was. He wore the cardigan-like jacket that had been draped over the back of the barstool he’d sat on. It looked expensive.

“Where’d you park?” I asked.

“I…” he paused. “I walked.”

My brow creased. “You _walked_?”

“I live just around the corner.” He pointed across the street at two high-rise residential buildings among the downtown skyline. “The shorter one.”

We walked the distance to the end of the sidewalk of the block we were on. He hit the pedestrian crossing button with his hand a few times. Okay, so he wore nicer clothes than the people I hung out with, bought drinks for strange girls, and lived right in the downtown core. Was he just a Good Samaritan or a creep?

“How do I know you’re not going to murder me?” I quipped.

“What? How do I know you’re not going to murder _me_?” he echoed. “Don’t think I didn’t see the tattoos you’re hiding under that jacket of yours while your band was playing.”

It was true, I was one of those indie band girls: dyed black hair and mismatched tattoos. I had a half-sleeve on my left arm and a couple of big tattoos on my right forearm, and there were more that he hadn’t seen. There was some assorted ink on my back and on one of my legs, too.

We both laughed, standing under the light cast by the streetlight right above us. I knew that I’d only known him for an hour but I didn’t distrust him. Besides, I’d seen far too many episodes of _Law & Order_ to know that paying for a bar tab with a credit card, like he had done, was an absolute no-no if one planned on committing a crime after. So far what I knew about him was that he’d bought me drinks and lived in a high-rise condo. It didn’t seem creepy. Maybe a little lonely.

Ben held his hand out. “Give me your phone.”

I raised an eyebrow but didn’t ask why. In my buzzed state, it took me a few extra seconds to locate it in the front pocket of my backpack. We were crossing the street as I hit my cell phone’s home button and typed in my passcode after sliding to unlock the screen. I handed it to him.

When we were across the way, under the streetlight of the next street, I stopped again while I waited for him to return the iPhone to my possession. He tapped on the screen a few times, using only one of his thumbs. He held it up in front of me proudly at eye level when he was done, a smile on his face that showed off a row of perfectly straight teeth.

The screen was set on the numeric phone dialog. He’d entered in a short code phone number. There it was, at the top of the screen: _911_. I guffawed.

“If you feel worried about your safety at any point,” he chided, “all you gotta do is dial.”

With the shake of my head, I hit the button on the top side of the phone to turn the screen off. I slid it back into the pocket that I’d taken it out of. When I looked back at the man in front of me, he was watching me expectantly, waiting for me to say something or make the next move.

“I don’t think I thanked you for the drinks,” I told him. “And thanks for this…helping me get home.”

He nodded. The reflection of the streetlight make his eyes sparkle when he bobbed his head. They were a pale shade of blue. As I took in the sight of him, I still didn’t know what had compelled him to butt into my business that night. He kind of looked like a grown up jock and here I was in my short polka dot dress, black tights, black-on-black Vans, and Members Only jacket. I took a small step closer to him anyway. He was cute and I was the right amount of buzzed.

“Don’t thank me just yet,” Ben replied with a shrug. “I’m actually pretty new in town too so…”

And there it was. He _was_ a little lonely.

“Ben,” I said softly, touching his arm.

He responded by leaning in and lowering his head, staring, so I knew I was reading the signals right. Our foreheads almost touched. “You have the most adorable nose,” he told me, tone so low that I would have missed the sentence entirely if we weren’t standing so close.

When guys hit on me, and used my appearance to do so, they usually didn’t begin with my nose. The more obvious place to start was with my eyes, bright green, earned from the perfect union of my parents’ ancestry. But my nose, it was entirely from my father, who was a descendant of the Coastal Salish indigenous people. The compliment Ben chose wasn’t exactly what I anticipated he would say. I probably expected something a little dirtier, something about my cherry lipstick or my hips and what they were begging for.

Still, I smirked and leaned forward and upward, so that there was no space in between us. I pressed my lips against his and was met with the slightest taste of tequila on his breath. I kissed him only once, and lightly, so that I could brush it off easily if he didn’t reciprocate. It was like a kiss between just friends under the mistletoe. After all, he could think I had a cute nose without wanting to kiss me.

But he did. He locked an arm around my waist to steady me and gave me a proper kiss. I closed my eyes and stood on the balls of my feet to lessen the height difference. His stubble was scratchy against my face when he caught my bottom lip between both of his own.

“Delia.” It was his turn to say my name when the kiss ended all too soon. “I’ve been drinking. I don’t think I should be driving right now.”

“You’re not going to leave a girl stranded, are you?”

“No. No way. You can stay at my place tonight,” he answered immediately, then added, “you can even have the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

If Ben was trying to flirt with me or get me to sleep with him, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it. But his arm was still anchored around my waist and he was drawing circles on my side. I didn’t mind at all.

“No need,” I kissed the corner of his mouth and then whispered in his ear, “we can share.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For a reader in another fandom that asked me to post this here. Thanks for reading. <3
> 
> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/47894371448/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes)


	2. Yellowhead Trail

There was no hangover the next morning. There was daylight coming in from behind the undrawn curtains. There was me, naked in an unfamiliar bed. I was wrapped up in a sheet and pinned to the mattress by the guy from the night before. Ben. He looked awfully cozy considering we were just two strangers that had decided to hook up. He lay lower down on the bed than me: head on the edge of the pillow and tucked to my chest, arm draped over my middle. I smiled momentarily. It was almost sweet.

There was something oddly sweet about Ben. Maybe sweet wasn’t the right word. _Considerate._ He was considerate. We’d made out some before we made it inside his apartment the night before. I remembered it all because I hadn’t gotten drunk. Ben had made sure of it. We’d been on the couch half naked and grinding against each other when he stopped to give me his own version of a sobriety test: he covered my wrist with two of his fingers. When I’d asked him what he was doing, he told me he was checking to see if my pulse was racing as an indicator of intoxication. _I’m a lot of things_ , he’d said, _but a guy who takes advantage of a drunk girl is not one of them._

He hadn’t wanted to get behind the wheel after an hour or so at the bar, but I wondered if he might actually be stone cold sober once I had him naked. There was just so much of him. I was short and petite—perpetuated more by being on the road so much than the inconsistent eating habits my band and I had on the road—but I was no lightweight. Like any respectable Canadian girl, I could hold my liquor. Well, Ben looked like he probably outweighed me by a hundred pounds. Not in the sick steroid bodybuilder way, and not with six-pack abs, but he was completely solid. Thick legs, ripped back and shoulders, a chest that you could light a match off of. And his arms were unreal.

I hung out with skinny musicians who _maybe_ did yoga occasionally. In my own band, the five of us were committed to running a 5K four days a week and taking our multivitamins every day, no matter where we were. But that was because being sick on tour was miserable, so we did what we could to keep our health, not because we were very concerned with our physiques. I’d never even seen a man like Ben before. Maybe that was why we fucked twice the night before.

The first time had been on the couch. Me on his lap, his palms guiding my hips as we thrust against each other selfishly, until the ripples of pleasure broke. We’d moved to the bedroom and did it slower. More touching and heavy breathing, but fucking just the same. I was well spent after he’d sent me to a second orgasm and I knew I’d drifted off soon after that. I might have been in the same spot I was now. There was a good chance I hadn’t moved all night if Ben had fallen asleep against me.

I wiped away the sleep from my eyes and the sheet rustled. I moved my foot gently and my toes met my bedmate’s shin bone. He stirred in his sleep and I held my breath. He didn’t wake up. Instead, his head moved a couple of inches away from my chest. I breathed a sigh of relief. Ben’s stirring was actually beneficial to me, allowing me to move onto my back under the weight of his arm. I winced. I was right; I had been in the same spot all night. The muscles along my side felt numb.

Ben stirred again. This time one of his legs moved forward and slid over one of mine. His breathing changed and his eyes opened. I bit the inside of my lip, stopping myself from gasping. Those eyes hadn’t looked this beautiful in the dark. They were like a crystallized gradient—light in the center around the iris, then transitioning through shades of blues into an outer ring of darker blue that was thicker than any other I’d seen before. I wondered if many other women had woken up next to him and thought what I thought. He was now the most physically perfect human I’d ever met—his body, his dick, and now his eyes.

My mind quickly wandered to a different place as he adjusted to being awake. I wondered what the hell his damage was. Attractive men with athletic builds, who lived alone in downtown buildings, who also drank alone in bars on weekdays had to have some form of emotional damage, right? Maybe he was a workaholic corporate slave? Or a writer?

_Maybe you should stop speculating._

“Hi, Delia,” he spoke, finally.

Well, if he remembered my name, he definitely hadn’t even gotten close to inebriated the night before. I offered a half-smile. “Hi, Ben.”

He cleared his throat. “Did you sleep okay?”

I nodded against the pillow my head was rested on.

“If I fall asleep on my back I snore really badly,” he went on, apparently unsatisfied with my answer. “I’ve been told it sounds like I’m cutting down trees.”

“I slept fine,” I reaffirmed. “You didn’t snore.”

Anyway, I slept like undisturbed oil at low temperature. I suspected he’d been on his side facing me all night, but if he did snore, I didn’t hear it.

“Do you have to be at the studio by a certain time?” he wondered as he shifted his legs away from mine and withdrew his arm from my body. “I’m good to drive you now.”

“I should be there before noon,” I answered, then added, “but if you have to get to work, it’s okay. I can take the bus.”

Now that it was morning, Strathcona County Transit was in service. I could get to Sherwood Park by bus from downtown Edmonton in about thirty minutes. From the central station hub, it was only one more bus and five minutes to the ranch.

“I have—” Ben stopped abruptly, paused, then corrected himself. “I don’t have to be anywhere until 10. It’s not even 8 o’clock yet.”

The morning after the casual sex and he was still being considerate. No walk of shame for me. Not even an awkward confrontation. I figured I ought to give him an easy out and free reign to kick me out of his bed. People who led normal lives, who weren’t musicians writing records, did still have to work on Thursday mornings, right?

“Only if you’re sure…” I said.

“Last night, I told you that I was going to make sure you got home safely,” he reminded me. “Let me keep my word.”

I wanted to smirk. He remembered our first words to each other selectively. He’d also said that he wasn’t going to drink with me or take me home, but he’d done both those things anyway.

“So,” Ben posed another question, “do you want the shower first or second?”

Damn. Another surprise. I didn’t even know that was going to be an option on the menu. I thought he would want me out of his place as soon as possible. Man, he was _really_ bad at this casual sex thing. Maybe that was his damage—he slept with a lot of girls, didn’t lead them to believe it was going to be anything more, but was also way too nice to them after.

“Um,” I paused, trying to quickly decide what the better option for me was.

All of the things I had with me _weren’t_ with me. They were in Ben’s living room. I thought about where articles of my clothes might be. My bra was probably on the ground at the foot of the couch, next to the used condom wrapper. I’d easily made it naked from the couch to the bed several hours before. Now, I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to parade my body in front of Ben out to the living room, even if he’d already seen me naked. For fuck’s sake, he’d fucked me. Still, the confidence I had the night before—the trace amount of liquid courage—wasn’t the same confidence I had now. Besides, I didn’t have to pee that badly.

“I’ll go second,” I finally answered.

His next gesture was a combination of a shrug and a single nod. He pulled back the part of the sheet that covered himself and stepped out of bed onto the wooden floor of his room. I was awarded with the full frontal view of Ben in the nude as he sauntered around the foot of the bed and into the attached bathroom. Yep, he was still just as hot as I thought he was the night before, full mooned and well hung. He didn’t seem at all fazed by his own nudity.

Only when the sound of the water running had been going for a minute did I move into a sitting position. I stayed sitting for just a moment before I decided to hightail it to the living room. I started picking up my clothes. I stopped at the shirt Ben had worn the night before, a black polo. It went over my head easily, the sleeves reaching my elbows and the bottom running mid-thigh on me. I hoped he wouldn’t mind, and I suspected he wouldn’t, since he’d proven to be nothing but considerate in the last nine or so hours. I was fine with putting on the same dress that I’d walked in wearing, but I would rather not put it on for the next ten minutes, take it off when I showered, then put it on again after.

After I made a pile of my clothes, the next step was grabbing my backpack. It was in the middle of the little entryway of the apartment. I’d tossed it pretty early and haphazardly in the midst of kissing Ben when we’d come up from the bar. Now I put it on the couch and sat down before checking for my cellphone. I hit the home button and my new notifications flashed on the lock screen. Miraculously, the battery had made it through the night and was at 8%.

Unlocked, there was one email and nine text messages. All of the texts were from my bandmates. Most of them were from Parker, but two were from Rich. The last one was from him: _Where you? Call. Worried._

I sighed. An incomplete sentence followed by single-word sentences meant he’d had too much to drink and was having trouble typing. But the fact that he was texting me at 1 in the morning, worried, after we’d had a fight, it proved that our friendship couldn’t ever be lost no matter what we were to each other. Now I owed him an apology. My failure to make it back to the ranch wouldn’t have bothered any of the guys if we were back home. But we _weren’t_ home and I _didn’t_ make it back to our ‘home away from home’. That wasn’t how friends and bandmates were supposed to be when they were all on the road together, not without communication.

_Be there soon. I’ll explain later._ I sent an identical message to both of my friends and felt bad about it.

I’d been selfish. I hadn’t been thinking of anything but my own satisfaction while I was being fucked the night before.

Half an hour later, after I’d showered, I was sitting in Ben’s car. He’d typed the address of Prairie Barn Studios into the GPS of his luxury vehicle, BMW in make, so that I wouldn’t have to keep guessing directions. I decided he couldn’t be a writer, not if he could afford a downtown condo _and_ luxury car. Still, I refrained from asking what he did for a living. That wasn’t something you asked someone that was just a one night stand, especially if they appeared to be rich. It was fun to keep guessing anyway. UFC gym owner. Contracting service operations manager. Astronaut.

“Uh…are you okay with the radio?”

Though I didn’t know how Ben made his living, he was well aware of how I made mine. That was why he was asking about the radio, because my whole life was wrapped up in the indie music scene. Though my particular music selections varied from day to day, a good chunk of the music I listened to was independent and most of my friends were people I’d met through music, one way or another. No, mainstream radio would not be my first choice for a drive. But 20 minutes with the radio on in the car, instead of the silent half-hour bus ride, wouldn’t kill me. It wasn’t _all_ bad.

“The radio is alright,” I replied to his question.

“Yesterday, when I got to the bar, you were playing your last song,” Ben kept the conversation going, “what’s your band called?”

“The Automatic Flowers.”

“The Automatic Flowers,” he repeated, as if trying to commit it to memory. “Automatic Flowers…isn’t that a song from _Clumsy_?”

“Wow,” I breathed out, turning and looking at him. “I’m so impressed you know that.”

His eyes remained fixed on the road. “Good album. Good 90s album.”

“I won’t disagree.” How could I disagree when I was in a band named after a song from it? “But I mean…we were kids.”

I was guessing that Ben was older than me—he looked older, and he seemed to be well put together with some sort of career—but only by a few years. Clumsy was the second album released by Our Lady Peace, a powerhouse Canadian alternative band, in 1997. It was arguably the best work they’d ever put out (in hindsight, choosing one of their songs for a band name was a terrible idea because all of the music they’d put out in the last decade was, well, terrible). To my knowledge, it was their most commercially successful album to date. But it still felt like an indie album to Rich and me—the two of us had the final say on what our band name ended up being—even though it’d been released on a major label.

_Clumsy_ and “Automatic Flowers” had a very band feel to it. There was no overproduction. The singing was urgent, imperfect, and even grating at times. The music was sincere. Everything came together at a balance. I would have been 8 when it was released. When I was 8, the Spice Girls were popular. It wasn’t until a few years later when I started getting into rock music that I would even have a clue as to what alternative music was. In my early teens I had to go back and discover music that I’d been too young to appreciate during its initial release.

Ben cracked a smile. “I think I had a stage, maybe when I was 14 or 15, when I was only into that sound. For a month I swear I only listened to Our Lady Peace and Moist.”

We came to a stop light and Ben glanced at me. I grinned. “That is a lot of whining and angst for 30 days.”

Canadian alternative rock of the 90s was a particular brand of grating. For nostalgia and from a cultural standpoint, there would always be a reason for me to appreciate it. But once I got past that around age 14, once I started listening to even older music that was loud and fast, it turned out that the alternative I’d known was not very good. My taste had improved significantly between 14 and 22, but (maybe unfortunately) the name of the band I was in would always be a call to the formative years of musical influence.

Ben cracked a smile, and gave me more credit than I deserved. “You know better than me, being in a band and all. Is it hard for you, being the only girl in the band?”

“Not really. I’m used to it,” I answered honestly. “By now I think I’m most comfortable when I’m with my boys, away from home.”

My band felt like my family. Anything I’d ever accomplished that meant something was shared with them. I loved that I got to sing and play bass, that I was part of something bigger than myself. We’d done more than make it out of Victoria. We were making just enough money to keep touring and make more music. We had fans. When we played, when Rich and I sang on stage, there were at least a few people singing along. As more time had passed, more people showed up to sing along. We were fortunate to have had enough support to not have to work odd jobs in between the last two tours. Our last tour before recording had been our first headlining tour. The venues may have been small, but they were full, and the kids—our peers—were there to see _our band_.

“Do you remember the guy in my band who was also singing last night?” I asked Ben. “The one who was playing the keyboard?”

“Sure.”

“He used to be my boyfriend,” I revealed. “We broke up six months ago.”

“Wow,” was Ben’s stunned answer, after a beat lapsed. “That…that’s crazy. How is your band still together?”

“That’s the thing,” I started, “I think we’ve always been more committed to the band than we were to each other. We became a couple a few years after we started the band, not the other way around. We’re on good terms most days of the week. Actually, the album that we’re working on, it’s about our breakup.”

“ _What_?” he choked on his question as the GPS chimed and he turned the car onto the last two-lane street before the little road, just a little wider than a bike path, that would lead up to Prairie Barn Studios.

“I know it’s a little bit wackyville,” I admitted. “But the best songs always seem to be about the disarray of relationships.”

Ben clicked his tongue. “I’m still salty on my last failed relationship. The things I have to say about my last ex-girlfriend…I don’t think I should say most of them out loud, much less in a song.”

I chuckled as the car reached the turn-off to the ranch. “We wrote our lyrics separately. Not just about the breakup. The rise and fall of our relationship, and the after. I know that we—Rich and I—we still hurt sometimes. But I don’t think either of us looks back on our time together negatively.”

My friendship with Rich would always be a little complicated because of the last two years. But I was hopeful that complicated didn’t mean it had to be strained for much longer. I wanted us to get to a point where we were even better friends than we’d been when we were best friends before. That was still down the road though. For now it was enough that we were trying, we were on good terms, and we were doing our best.

“Maybe you’re just a better person than I am,” Ben answered.

“Doubtful.”

The ride on the narrow path didn’t last long. The strip of land that the ranch was on was only about an acre, and the distance from the main road to the front door was not bad at all. The bus stop, down the main road at the intersection, was probably within reasonable walking distance as long as it wasn’t a subzero day in winter. My bandmates and I had begun doing our fitness runs around the property line for the duration of our stay in Alberta. Grant’s closest neighbours a kilometre away were actually a bedroom community of brand new homes.

Ben pulled up behind the tour van that belonged to my band. He put his vehicle into park but didn’t turn off the engine. “I can’t believe little places like this exist a 20 minute drive from downtown.”

I quipped, “This is _Wild Rose Country_ , after all.”

He nodded without a word.

Oh, God. To this point, there hadn’t been a single awkward moment between us. But there was about to be. How did one politely say ‘It was great sleeping with you. Thanks for the ride. See you never.’?

“Thank you for making sure I got home in one piece,” I said sincerely.

“No problem,” he answered and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “It was nice meeting you.”

_It was nice fucking you._

“Likewise,” I agreed, keeping my thoughts to myself. My fingers went for the door handle and I turned away from him with one more awkward statement. “So…take care.”

My fingers closed around the handle and I was about to open the door. “Delia,” he blurted my name out abruptly, stopping me.

I thought I heard him sigh or curse under his breath to himself. I didn’t think he meant for it to sound like that. The man was hot, but he was not smooth. I looked at him again, waiting for him to speak.

“Can I call you?” Ben asked. “Maybe we can run into each other again.”

There he was being considerate again. He’d accidentally said my name tinged with desperation just so he could be nice and end the night we’d spent together without the awkwardness that I’d been willing to end it on. His eyes were so blue and inviting and I didn’t care which way he meant it. He was already digging in his pocket for his phone so I could input my number. To return the favor—he’d been nothing but kind to me—I actually typed in 10 digits in the correct order that were mine. I knew he wouldn’t be calling me anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/49069362838/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	3. 104 Street

Grant’s vacation house in Sherwood Park had three bedrooms. At the moment, two of the rooms were shared by five musicians that had spent their formative years in BC. My roommate for the next two months was Parker, our drummer in The Automatic Flowers. Our time in Edmonton would be the first time since the band had started touring that I wasn’t rooming with Rich. The five of us all usually slept in the same room anyway when we were on tour—hotel rooms were such an expensive necessary evil, even when they were “cheap” hotel rooms—but when we did have roommate choices, it had always been Rich and me together. This time he was rooming with Trevor and Anthony, the two guitarists in the band.

When I got to the house, I switched backpacks, grabbing my larger one that contained all the necessary supplies of the day and a change of clothes, mindful not to wake Parker or Grant and his wife, Larissa. I locked myself in the main bathroom of the second floor to get myself ready. There were two makeup routines in my repertoire: one for daily and one for live performances. Both were built around the same thing—winged eyeliner. Using a felt-tip liquid eyeliner, I’d highlighted my green eyes the same way since the last year of high school and now, at 22, I had it down to a three-minute routine.

On tour, I didn’t usually do my makeup until after we’d loaded in and had sound check (if there _was_ a sound check) at a venue because it was full-on for stage lights: heavy mascara, blush-laden cheeks, lips lined to perfection and tinted with red or vampy lipstick. Today was a demo day, an ordinary day, except for the fact that we were filming the majority of our two months making the album. Because we were self-reliant, we were filming an extended EPK documentary of our ‘making of’ ourselves. Anthony, who’d joined our band two years ago, had been working on a fine arts degree in Film  & Video when he quit school to go on tour. So, for documentary’s sake, I went through with my quick daily makeup routine: light mineral powder concealer and foundation, mascara once my eyeliner was dry, and a conditioning lip stain just for a little color.

I didn’t hear a peep from inside the room Anthony shared with Rich and Trevor. Just as Parker had been in his top bunk in the room we shared, the rest of my bandmates were still asleep. Theirs was the only room on the main floor of the house and along the hallway that led to the family room, which had double French doors that opened up to a deck. It was the quickest route to the barn, faster than going back out the front door.

A keychain with a single key was sitting in a bowl of marbles on the coffee table. I grabbed it before I walked out to the deck, my backpack slung over my shoulder. Upon entrance through the barn side door, the triangular sound lock entryway presented two inner doors to the live room and control room, respectively. Once I had the overhead lights on in the main room—the live room—I smiled to myself. The original owners of the property had used the barn for their horses. Our producer extraordinaire gutted the place, creating a control room out of the tack room, enclosed isolation booths where the horse stalls had been and eliminating the loft for a big live room with exposed rafters. Grant had done such a beautiful job reimagining the place to turn it into Prairie Barn Studios. It was my first time inside the studio by myself and it was still morning. I could get a lot of work done.

Within thirty minutes, I was surrounded by my work. I was sitting on the floor, on one of the throw rug covered hardwood floors, my laptop and spiral notebook both open. An acoustic guitar was sitting in my lap. The lyrics for the forthcoming album were already written. Now it was a matter of putting them to music, turning them into songs, and creating rough demos that we could work off of.

There was a different amount of work done for each chunk of writing. I had sound bites on my computer: some were guitar riffs or chord progressions that I’d played around with. Some were just me humming a pattern a couple of times. I tried to get ideas into sound as soon as I came up with them. They didn’t have to be extravagant from the start. That’s why I had my bandmates—we would eventually figure it out together and make it whole.

Our album would have 12 songs on it. Since Rich and I were the singers in the band, we wrote all the lyrics. Half of the songs would be his breakup lyrics, and the other half would be mine. We’d completed one demo the day before. We had to finish three more by the end of the week to be on schedule. Our eleven weeks in Edmonton were well planned: 3 weeks to demo, one week to rehearse and tweak, one week off, 4 weeks to record, one week of post-production and a week of allowance, just in case.

The song we would be doing a rough cut of, hopefully by the end of the day, was one of mine. It would be easier for me to give Trevor an idea of what I wanted him to play on the lead guitar, and Rich an idea of what I wanted him to do on the keyboard, if need be, if I made progress on the song on my own. My songs were usually the louder, guitar-driven ones while his were more structurally controlled and upbeat. There wasn’t always a place for his percussion on my songs. Sometimes there wasn’t a need for his percussion on his own songs, but we had yet to write any music without the bass. It was always a self-validating thing for me: our band wasn’t made up of boys and a girl so I could look pretty, sing a few lines, and wave a tambourine around. No. I was integral.

I had the metronome out, trying what I thought would be the leading riff at different counts, when the door of the live room opened. With a cup of tea in his hand, Rich shut the door behind him before walking into the room.

“You’re up early,” I told him.

He laughed, setting his mug on top of an amplifier. “Not as early as you.”

For a moment the only sound in the room, with its enhanced acoustics, was the metronome ticking back and forth. I guess he’d gotten my text. He knew I was working alone because I’d woken up elsewhere and had only recently returned to the ranch. He spent the next several minutes setting up the keyboard and xylophone in the middle of the room. Our gear trailer (which was usually towed by our van) had been parked and emptied since we made the long drive from Vancouver, all of the gear strewn around inside the live room. Grant had some really awesome gear in the studio that we couldn’t wait to use, including his grand piano and some vintage guitars, but since our _recording_ time—the time in Edmonton we would actually be paying for—was a few weeks away, we couldn’t use it yet. We were demoing exclusively with our own gear.

“So where were you?” Rich finally asked when he was done and back to sipping tea.

I stood up and sighed. “I…I made a friend.”

“Yeah?” he peered at me with his grey eyes over his Earl Grey. “Your friend take care of you?”

_Oh, he did more than that._

“We were drinking. The responsible thing to do was just stay over.” Rich had set up two stools around his instruments. The second was facing him, in front of the keyboard. I sat down and held my guitar against my chest.

I didn’t owe it to him to explain that I didn’t reply to his 1 AM text because I’d been having sex with a handsome stranger. That didn’t mean I wanted to throw it in Rich’s face either. He was my ex-boyfriend but he wasn’t the enemy.

He nodded. “I’m sorry that we fought after the gig yesterday, Delia.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I apologized. “I didn’t have to be so stubborn. I probably should have just gone to the party with you guys.”

“Well I don’t know about that,” Rich shrugged. “You made it into the studio first this morning.”

I smiled. Without words, he was telling me that he accepted my apology. Neither of us had to say anything more about the way we’d acted the night before. Silent communication was something we’d been doing since we were teenagers. Part of the reason we’d been such close friends practically since the day we met was because we just understood each other. So many things could go unsaid.

“How long have you been in here anyway?” he wondered.

“An hour or so,” I said after glancing at the atomic wall clock.

Rich powered on his keyboard, a Nord Electro 2. “So, tell me about your song.”

“Uh…” I paused. “Well I think I have the arrangement down. But it’s not done yet.”

He shrugged, nonchalant. “Let’s work on it together.”

His words were a little shocking. Our last real collaboration seemed eons ago. We’d written all the words and music for our EP and first album together. Writing our old material had seemed almost easy at the time. We could just sit in a room for a couple of hours, start with a small idea and finish with a whole song laid out on the acoustic guitar or piano. Writing post-breakup was so much more difficult. I couldn’t bounce ideas off him because all of the things I wrote were about him or about us.

The first time the band talked about our next album was the first big breakthrough for Rich and me. We were honest with each other. It turned out he was writing just the way I was, except from his perspective. We figured out that the honesty of the songs might be hurtful, but it was going to help us heal. Our relationship had never been a secret to anyone, least of all the kids who listened to our band. If we could be honest with ourselves about the breakup, then we could be honest with them and share what we’d both separately been holding on to.

But the work we’d done for the new album was just that, separate. We had an easier time being on tour together after we decided to move forward with the new album but that didn’t make us ready to collaborate immediately. We had to work up to that. The demo we’d just done the day before was one of Rich’s songs. I hadn’t heard any of the words until we were all together as a band and he was explaining his instrumental vision.

Now he was offering to change that by working on my song together. There would be no surprise in front of the guys. It was so reasonable of him, not just for the album’s purpose but our friendship as well. It was a step in the right direction back to the way things were before we’d fallen in love with each other and made a mess of everything.

I hooked the guitar strap over my shoulder and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s get to work.”

 

\-----

 

Just as I expected, the guy with the downtown apartment and fancy car never called me. But I was wrong thinking I would never hear from him again. It was just a few days later that I ended up exchanging text messages with him. I re-read his initial message over a few times as I found myself on a bus into downtown, en route back to his place.

_It’s Ben. Can I see you again?_

The wording was very specific, I thought. He hadn’t asked me to hang out. Nothing about it suggested that he wanted to do anything date-like. I thought the same thing sitting on the bus as I’d thought when I responded the day before: it was a booty call. Well, technically it was a booty _text_.

I’d never answered a booty call before. I’d never gotten one before. Replying to Ben’s ended up being kind of a relief. I hadn’t really thought about how sexually frustrated I was in the months after my breakup until Ben had sent me into sexual elation. In the days following our night together, I’d secretly felt about as horny as a teenage boy.

Scrolling down the conversation window, the rest of our exchanged messages had to do with arrangements. He’d asked if I could meet him the next night, tonight. I told him I would take the bus into the city in the evening. The earlier we started, the more rounds we could go for, right? He told me I could just show up, that he would be home all night.

The bus stopped right in front of his building, just on the other side of the street. Thank God for suburban commuter routes. After checking for cars, I ran across the street instead of waiting for the crosswalk. An older woman was stepping out and held both the security and lobby doors for me as she saw me approaching. I nodded my thanks at her before heading straight for the elevator.

Ben lived on the 20th floor. The ride up hadn’t seemed so long when we’d been making out as it did when I was alone with only elevator music for company. The condo building was relatively new, definitely built in the last five years, but nothing overly fancy. It was standard: modern décor in the lobby, geometric patterns on the tiles, slate-coloured walls in the hallways, and perfectly identical doors on all the units.

The door to Ben’s place was a solid copper colour with the unit number, 2007, embossed on a chrome plaque. I rapped my knuckles against the door a few times and played with my favorite accessory, the carved silver ring on my right middle finger, then looked down at my outfit. I didn’t really own a lot of sexy clothes in the sophisticated sense. To be honest, I only really knew how to be “hot” in the rock musician kind of way, because that was what I wore on stage—that was when I looked my best. I had on a little navy blue dress under a bomber jacket, paired with my worn-in Doc Martens 8-hole boots. Peeking out from one of my boots, my leg tattoos were somewhat visible under the sheer black polka dot tights that I hadn’t wanted to wear but, alas, it was mid-September in Edmonton, already too chilly for my taste.

I frowned at the door when there was no answer. Ben said he would be home all night. In fact, I knew he was home because I could hear the TV faintly through the door. I knocked again, louder, and crossed my arms over my chest. He had told me that I didn’t need to text him that I was on my way. There wasn’t a doorbell. Maybe I should’ve waited for him to buzz me up?

Finally, I heard a scraping noise behind the door and then it slowly opened. I looked up into Ben’s crystal blue eyes. He blinked at me a couple of times.

“Delia,” he sounded confused saying my name.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

He didn’t look like someone who knew he was about to get laid. He wore mesh shorts and a white t-shirt, the faded ink on the front advertising some burger joint in Philadelphia. His sandy brown hair was flattened down on one side, made more obvious because his hair was so short.

“I’m…I’m fine.” He sighed, “Sorry. I completely spaced on our conversation yesterday…yesterday morning.”

Well, shit. I felt my cheeks heat up with embarrassment. His last words sounded more like a question than a statement. I was prompt. I’d dressed hot keeping in my mind that he was going to help undress me. He, on the other hand, wasn’t even sure what time of day he’d sent out his booty call.

“Oh,” I blushed. “I…um—I—”

Ben touched my arm, prompting me to stop my blubbering. “Come inside.”

He still sounded confused. I was a little confused myself as he welcomed me into the little entryway of his home. So he forgot that he’d said he wanted to see me, but seeing me at the door, it was cool, he still wanted to ‘see me’ anyway? Seriously, he was terrible at casual sex, and it had nothing to do with his performance.

A few steps and we were standing in the vicinity of the kitchen.

He rested one of his hands on the granite countertop of the little breakfast nook that housed the sink. Then he gave me a sheepish look. “I got a concussion a couple of hours after I was texting you yesterday. That’s why I forgot about tonight.”

My jaw dropped. “Are you alright?”

I knew I’d already asked him just moments before if everything was okay but it felt worth repeating. I’d never had a concussion but given what I’d heard about them from friends who’d gotten them by being in mosh pits or accidentally getting kicked in the head by crowd surfers, they were no ice cream sundae.

“Yeah, I’m okay. It was only minor. I’ve been headache-free all day,” Ben answered. “But I injured my neck a little. It’s still pretty sore.”

“Oh, Ben.” This time it was me who touched his arm. “How did that happen?”

“I, uh, I was playing in an intrasquad game yesterday…” he trailed off, pausing for a moment before speaking again, “I’m on the hockey team here.”

_An intrasquad game?_

Then it clicked with me. Not ‘a’ hockey team. _The_ hockey team. “Wait, do you mean the Oilers?!” I screeched.

“Yeah,” Ben said simply, completely calm, like it was no big deal. “The game yesterday, it was for the end of training camp.”

“You play for the Oilers,” I said it out loud as I tried to digest the new information. “You’re on the team that holds this city together.”

“Well when you say it like that…” Ben never finished his sentence as he went and sat on the loveseat.

“It all makes sense now,” I looked out the floor to ceiling windows of his panoramic downtown view and shook my head. “That’s how you paid for these digs and that amazing car. You’re a hockey player.”

“I’m actually just renting both,” he answered and patted the seat next to him, encouraging me to sit there. “The teams help get these things lined up when you move to a new team, new city.”

I laughed at that as I walked over. “This is insane.”

Music had been the love of my life since I could remember. It didn’t leave much room for deep appreciation of much else. I didn’t follow hockey, but I had a decent enough understanding of the game to understand its appeal. I understood why in any given place in Canada the people were hockey obsessed, whether it be the NHL or junior or even bantam. Now Ben was telling me he was part of the whole thing.

No wonder he seemed overly responsible on the night we met. He’d cautioned me from getting drunk, he hadn’t even gotten close to buzzed but he didn’t get behind the wheel, and he’d made sure he wasn’t taking advantage of me when I decided I was going to sleep with him. Hockey was king in Canada, and the hometown NHL teams were like religion in cities like Edmonton. I didn’t know if Ben was a rising star or just barely on the team, but it didn’t matter. A report of a player who got a DUI or a sexual harassment case would be sure to hit the media like wildfire, and the Oilers probably weren’t keen on dealing with a PR nightmare. I guess Ben had just been practical the other night.

“You could have told me,” I spoke again. “I’m a little embarrassed I didn’t know.”

Oh, God. Didn’t girls who slept with hockey players have their own exclusive club? Didn’t they seek out guys like Ben to add to the collection of notches on their bedposts? Why was he lonely and texting me?

“I don’t expect people to know who I am anywhere I go,” Ben responded and leaned his head back against the couch cushion gingerly and closed his eyes. “It’s not like I’m Sidney Crosby.”

“And who is Sidney Crosby?”

Immediately his eyes opened again. He turned his head against the cushion and looked at me with like I had lost my mind. It was a mixed look of disappointment and disapproval. I started snickering and poked him in the shoulder.

“I’m kidding. Of course I know who he is,” I assured Ben. “I live in Vancouver, remember? We were home for The Golden Goal.”

With the shake of his head, slowly, he smirked, as if he was amused that he’d believed me. He exhaled deeply.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to go?” I wondered. “So you can rest?”

He was a professional athlete with a concussion and sore neck. He was probably supposed to refrain from physical activity that could aggravate the injury. I assumed we weren’t going to be sleeping with each other tonight.

“Stay. I could use the company. Too early to go to bed—I was just going to order a movie,” he picked up the remote from the coffee table and waved it in the air. “You hungry? We can get delivery.”

He said everything like it was the most normal thing in the world. Like we were actual friends who knew each other better than having hooked up after a couple of drinks a few days back.

“I ate before I headed over here,” I told him as I kicked off my boots and peeled off my jacket, “but I do want dibs on choosing the movie.”

Ben pulled up the menu customized by his cable provider for the ‘On Demand’ selections and then handed the remote over to me. He picked up the pair of reading glasses that rested on the coffee table and slid them onto his nose as I started scrolling through the movie menu. There were a couple of big budget action thrillers and one romantic comedy. The rest were indie movies, and I read through the summaries. It came down to a comedy-drama with Will Ferrell and a dark comedy with Joseph Gordon Levitt.

My problem with Levitt was that I’d seen _10 Things I Hate About You_ way too many times, and he was always just the character Cameron to me, no matter how good or different his new movies were. _Everything Must Go_ was the title I confirmed to charge to Ben’s account without even previewing the trailer. It was a no brainer. Jock types liked Will Ferrell movies, and I’d just found out that Ben was an actual jock.

A skipping sound echoed lightly in the room—not from the movie—and out of the corner of my eye I saw movement across the chocolate-coloured hardwood floor. I gasped, “Who is this little cutie?”

The movement turned out to be an adorable tuxedo kitten, black all over except for a tuft of white hair at its neck and paws. The tiny animal strutted across the floor to the space between us on the couch and the coffee table and then stopped at Ben’s feet.

“This is Roscoe,” Ben informed me as the kitten proceeded to rub up against his leg. “I adopted him in the summer before I moved here and we’ve been buddies ever since. You didn’t meet him last time ‘cause he was over at my teammate’s house. His wife is gonna take care of Roscoe when we’re on road trips this season. We thought the little guy should stay over there for a while so he’ll be used to it when I’m away.”

I leaned forward and down towards the ground at Roscoe and held my hand out, wondering if he would swipe at me with one of his little paws or let me pet his beautiful black coat. He stopped his movement against Ben’s leg and just looked up at me, staring. I smiled. Roscoe’s green eyes were way better than mine. I turned to Ben, “This is a really tiny cat for such a big guy like yourself.”

“Opposites attract,” Ben shrugged. “And anyway, I need some stability in my life.”

There was an undertone in his voice that I couldn’t place. I didn’t really get his loneliness. I didn’t have to. We’d texted about me coming over so that we could sleep with each other, not share our feelings. I was okay with not knowing.

Roscoe meowed at me a single time and then jumped onto the coffee table in front of us. He quickly lay down and began grooming himself. Ben laughed. “Just wait, by the end of the movie, he’ll warm up to you and want your attention.”

The kitten was lost in his own world, comfortable on his side as he went to town on his arm. Ben looked comfortable on his side of the loveseat, too. In a lazy, slouched sitting position, his limbs were sprawled out in front of him. It took me less than 20 minutes to get fidgety. It wasn’t like I could cuddle up to him. There wasn’t anywhere else to sit, either, except for the floor.

The allure of the downtown condo began and ended there, downtown. There were nice views out the large windows, and probably while standing on the balcony, but the apartment itself wasn’t luxurious. It was just a normal up-to-date apartment that was pretty small. There wasn’t a fireplace or a mantle. The place had probably come furnished: Ben didn’t have any personal pictures up and he didn’t have a kitchen table, just a couple of barstools at the breakfast nook.

Ben’s apartment floor plan was is the shape of an ‘L’. From where I was sitting, I could see the front door and I could also see the door to the bedroom. The contents of the closet in the hallway that went toward the bedroom—which had been shut during my previous visit—were on display, a door stopper jammed under the sliding door to keep it open. It contained only a stacked space-saving washer and dryer combo and stuff for Roscoe: a scratching post, a carrier, and a litter box. I leaned against the side of the loveseat with my elbow, my palm cupping my chin. I crossed and uncrossed my legs as I smirked at a clever bit of dialogue in the movie.

“Here,” Ben sensed my uncomfortableness and handed me one of the throw pillows that had been pinned between his arm and the corner on his side of the couch. “You can put your feet up.”

Following his advice, I turned in the chair so that I was facing his profile and hitched my legs from the ground up to my chest. I wedged the pillow between my back and the couch and sighed internally. It wasn’t any more comfortable than how I’d been sitting. Actually it was worse. Ben was planted right in the middle of the cushion on his side of the loveseat and his athletic build took up so much space that I couldn’t move my legs without kicking him.

He surprised me when he went for my ankles and extended my legs so they were draped over his, my calves resting on his thighs in perpendicular fashion. Ben looked at me without lifting his head from the back of the couch. “Better?”

My head aligned with the pillow and suddenly the arch support my back got was that of a fluffy cloud. This time I sighed out loud as he rested his palms on one of my shins. “Perfect.”

Later, when I was lying in Ben’s bed, Roscoe decided I was going to be his heat source for the night and curled up against me. Ben and I were sharing the bed, but with the option of having sex eliminated, we weren’t even touching. It would be too intimate. Both of us were quiet for a long time once the lights were out. We hadn’t spoken much during the movie either. I doubt either of us expected that there would be much talking going on if the night had gone as we intended. I still wanted to fuck him without any emotional attachment. I couldn’t help but feel a little let down by his concussion as I thought about how the sex had been last time.

“Delia,” my name was a whisper off his tongue.

I thought he’d already fallen asleep. I was halfway to sleep in oblivion, thinking about his body. “Hmm?”

“I wish I didn’t get that dumb concussion yesterday. You looked so good tonight,” Ben’s voice was husky, “I’m so mad I can’t do anything about it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/50115152914/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	4. Whyte Avenue

“What are you doing here?” I wondered with eyes wide.

My band had just finished its third little gig in Alberta’s capital city. We played six songs at a pizza bar on Whyte Avenue, the central hub of Edmonton’s arts district. Our set list, although short, had been heavily sided on my vocals so I’d gulped down a ton of water right before we went on. After twenty minutes in front of a room of college kids and indie aficionados, I had to go to the bathroom as soon as we were done. When I stepped back into the hallway, there was Ben, waiting for me.

He stepped toward me, closing the gap between us, and kept moving forward until he’d backed me into a corner. “I wanted to see you.”

I smirked. This time there was no second guessing. He wanted to get laid. He’d made it very clear the last time I was over at his apartment that he planned on getting me over there again once his injury healed over. Almost two weeks had passed since then. Tonight was the last day of September.

“How did you know where I’d be?” I asked.

He couldn’t be in the same place as me by coincidence. Ben lived in downtown and the Oilers played their games at Rexall Place, north of downtown. Whyte Avenue, in Old Strathcona, was in the opposite direction. The last time I’d spoken to him, a couple of days after our failed booty call, he told me he had a headache and his neck felt stiff. I hadn’t expected him to seek me out. I didn’t know he’d been inside the pizza bar watching us play long enough to know where to find me.

Ben shrugged. “Facebook.”

Of course. Like any other band, we used our social media accounts to relay information to the world. The Automatic Flowers official Facebook page as of late was a conglomerate of pictures, information on where to see us play in Edmonton, and short videos. We’d committed to doing two videos a week for the duration of our stay at Grant’s studio: one update about our work on the album and one acoustic cover song.

“You could have sent me a text, you know,” I told Ben.

A warning would have been nice. It would have been nice to have extra underwear and facial moisturizer for the next morning. Considering what had happened the first time we slept together, I knew it wasn’t going to be just once before I was sent on my way. It would be until we were both spent and fell asleep in his bed. I didn’t have to ask. If I went over to his place I knew I’d be spending the night.

Instead of apologizing, he put one of his palms against the wall, pinning me against it. He grazed his lips against mine as he whispered, “Surprise.”

It was the most aggressive I’d ever seen him. Or maybe it was just the horniest. He was a good looking athlete. Two weeks was probably the longest he’d gone without sex in years. I probably wasn’t even his only current option. Just his first for the time being.

His other hand was on my hip, inching southward, and I gave into his kiss for a few seconds before I pushed him away. “I have to tell someone I’m leaving,” I said.

Ben smiled at that. He nodded without a word and let me walk away from him.

My bandmates were scattered around the room. After my run to the washroom and my run-in with Ben, I was sure that enough time had passed for all of our gear to be reloaded into the van. The nice part about working on an album and only playing in one city was that we didn’t need to bring the gear trailer everywhere. Since we drove from the ranch straight to the venues and back, and the big green passenger van wasn’t acting as our home, as long as the four of us could fit with all the gear, we could roll in and out. It didn’t have to be too organized or comfortable.

Parker was the first of my bandmates that I spotted. He was in line to claim his personal pan pizza ticket. Another band was starting their set and I assumed the rest of my boys had joined the audience to check out the local talent.

“Hey,” I greeted as I pulled out my own ticket stub from the back pocket of my skinny jeans and held it out to him, “here, take mine, too.”

“What kind of pizza do you want?” he asked, misunderstanding my intention.

“No, I mean, you can have mine,” I clarified.

Parker raised an eyebrow. “You going somewhere, Deels?”

“Yeah, I...” _I’m off to go hook up with some of the other local talent._ “I’m heading out. I’ll see you in the morning.”

A smirk crept its way onto the drummer’s lips. “Oh, Delia. He’s here?”

My bandmates weren’t stupid. They knew what it meant the two times that I’d been away from the ranch overnight. Beyond that, Parker was my roommate. He’d had a chance to grill me. I only told him that I met a hot guy to fool around with. I didn’t say anything about the Oilers or Ben’s concussion.

“Yup,” I answered.

Parker turned around, facing the room, scanning it without a hint of subtlety. He turned halfway back to me and used his chin to gesture. “Is that him?”

Following the general direction of Parker’s gesture, I spotted Ben near the exit. He was watching Parker and me have a conversation about him. He didn’t look impatient, but he did look ready to leave. “Yeah, that’s him,” I responded.

Parker waved at Ben from across the room with a toothy grin. Ben looked a bit puzzled but he waved back a few times, less enthusiastically. Parker would have kept waving if I didn’t yank his arm down.

“Oh my God,” I hissed. “Can you not?”

He cackled. He actually _cackled_. “He’s pretty cute. A little buff for my taste. But hey, if that’s your new thing—”

“Okay,” I interrupted. Just because I was the only girl in the band and Parker was the only gay guy in the band, it didn’t mean I wanted to hear any more of his opinion on Ben’s attractiveness. “I’m leaving now.”

“Well, have fun.” Parker wiggled his eyebrows at me and teased, “Call me if you need any help.”

He may have been all for making fun of me as I went off into the night, but Parker was all for me having my own fun, too. Parker was a fun person – pleasant to be around and proud of who he was. He had gotten into the same sad, angry music as Rich, Trevor and me in high school, because it had been a dark time for him before he came out. Music was the place where none of it mattered. That was how he’d ended up as our drummer, because he was otherwise well-liked by our peers and even involved in school clubs. Hiding who he really was had been a drag for him. The breakup between Rich and me had been a drag for Parker, too. He’d gone through enough crap on his own in the last few years. He didn’t need to deal with ours. He just wanted all of us, as a band, to stay happy. Whatever fun I was going to get into in Edmonton, he would support it.

It was a Friday night in Edmonton’s most happening neighborhood. The bars and restaurants were packed. There were lines forming outside the nightclubs. All of the available free street parking had long been occupied hours before. But Ben wasn’t dirt cheap. It just meant that he’d dropped a few bucks to park his car while he convinced me to go home with him, which didn’t take long. We walked a few blocks to a parkade.

“I’m right here,” he said as he clicked on a keyless remote, prompting flashing tail lights from a black Lincoln Navigator.

“Did you get into a car accident?” I asked when we were both in the vehicle.

“No,” he answered and gave me a quizzical look as he started the engine.

“This isn’t what you were driving the last time I saw you.” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Oh. A few of the guys on the team—the ones that have played here for a couple of years—they told me that it could basically snow any day now,” Ben explained. “So I took the other car back to the rental place. I figured this would be better for the long winter, you know?”

Actually, I didn’t know. Victoria rarely got more than thirty centimetres of snow for a whole year and the snow in Vancouver, though more, wasn’t really anything to get up in arms about. I’d seen heavy snowfall on tour but the band never stayed in one place long enough to experience the misery of a long winter.

I guffawed. “And what, they didn’t have any Hyundais?”

Ben got a big laugh out of that as he backed out of the parking spot.

“Hey, you know what this car has that the last one didn’t?”

“What?”

He pawed at the middle console with one hand, keeping his eyes where he was steering. After a moment he found a cord and held it out in my direction. I followed the path that it took, attached to the stereo interface out of the AUX port.

“You won’t have to listen to the radio,” he suggested.

My phone was quickly out of the front pocket of my backpack. I plugged it in, unlocked it, and clicked on the icon for my music library. I didn’t keep a lot of music on my phone. I had an old school iPod (the kind with the click-wheel that could only play songs and videos) that housed my digital collection and I had a vinyl record collection back home. I did have a playlist on my phone that I’d been listening to over the last week in preparation for our next acoustic cover.

I powered on the stereo and selected the auxiliary as the audio source. When the first notes of a song were streaming through the speakers, I set my phone down in one of the cup holders.

“Oh man. I was bracing myself for you to put on some gut wrenching heavy powerviolence,” Ben exhaled, recognizing the R&;B track, “and then you go and put on something that has Kanye West.”

I was doubtful that Ben ever had to brace himself for anything. I explained, “There’s one song that our band is working on, we kind of want my vocals to be…bigger. Like, I’m used to just singing at a normal volume without vocal runs or anything like that. I made this playlist of women that really sing so I can get into the mindset of belting it out.”

I wasn’t a singer in the traditional sense like Alicia Keys. Not even like Hayley Williams from Paramore. I sang well and my style worked for the band but I didn’t have the kind of voice that would land me on a reality show singing competition. I never really sang _loud_ or explored the full potential of my vocal range. Neither did Rich. We had yet to write a song that required it.

“This guy I know, Kris, one of my former teammates, knew all the words to this song,” Ben said. “They even played a customized version for him on the jumbotron a few times.”

“What do you mean by customized?” I wondered.

“The rap part, instead of of Kanye it was Kris,” Ben answered and chuckled to himself, adding, “and he _could not_ rap.”

Estelle’s “American Boy” was the song playing. I’d chosen it for my playlist not because it featured Kanye West but because it had a little bit of everything I was studying vocally for the next week. Her voice had such a nice vibrato in its undertone and it sounded effortless. She could sing slow or fast—she was a rapper, too—without it compromising her smooth tone or how she hit her notes. The song didn’t use dynamic vocal range but if I had to guess, she was actually holding back.

The drive from Old Strathcona to downtown felt longer than the drive from downtown to Prairie Barn Studios. Maybe it was the anticipation of sleeping with each other again, knowing that we’d already meant to until Ben got his concussion. I sang along half-heartedly to the music that came through the speakers once in a while. Ben wasn’t much of a talker. He was more of the strong, silent type, I decided. He said and did only to get what he wanted.

My theory seemed pretty plausible once we were in the elevator. Back at the pizzeria, I already knew I was going to fuck him. But the way he kissed me in the elevator really drove the idea home. He wasn’t overly demanding. His tongue slipped into my mouth only a few times, just enough to get me to respond and try to get closer to him. Forget words. He didn’t need them. He was better at doing than saying. I was pretty sure that the way he was stroking my ribcage with his thumb was enough to make me jump him right there if the doors hadn’t opened.

There was no detour on the way to the bedroom once we were inside his apartment. He had me pinned to the mattress on my back in nothing but my thong in no time. My fingers trailed down his solid core to the waistband of his boxer briefs where he was pressed against me. My fingers dipped beneath the fabric on his wide hips and I eased it down as far as I could as I went over the cheeks of his ass.

He moved off me momentarily, ending our skin-to-skin contact as he got rid of his underwear and went for a condom in the drawer of the bedside table. He changed our lighting situation, clicking on the lamp. We’d been too busy making out and undressing each other to think about that when we entered, the only light coming in from the hallway. I took the moment to catch my breath as he ripped open the foil packaging.

“For the record,” he said as he rolled the condom down his length, “I like the way you sing.”

It was a little confusing. I raised an eyebrow. The conversation about singing had long been over back in the car. “Thanks, Ben,” I responded anyway.

He reclaimed his spot, moving over me and settling between my legs. He kissed me on the mouth once and worked his way down, leaving a trail of kisses down my navel. He stopped where my waist and underwear met, kissing my thigh instead. Then he peered up at me with his beautiful blues eyes and gave me a new kind of smile that I’d never seen on him before.

“You make this face sometimes when you’re singing. You close your eyes as you’re feeling the music you’re playing. It’s incredibly sexy,” Ben’s words were a harsh whisper as he finally slid the thong down my legs and to the ground. “I want to make you make that face right now.”

 

\-----

 

We got it down to a science in the next two weeks. Ben and I liked the pleasure we brought to each other, so we kept at it. We also got healthier about it compared to the first two times we slept together. My small backpack was expertly packed with bathroom essentials and clean underwear. I took my makeup off and we both brushed our teeth before we got down to business. Each of us got up to pee at some point, either right after the sex or in the middle of the night. We fell asleep against each other, because Ben was still convinced that he’d keep me up with his snoring if we didn’t.

We’d even established two ground rules. First of all, we knew what we were getting into. We were _only_ hooking up; we weren’t in a pre-stage where we were “getting to know each other” and we weren’t dating each other. There obviously wasn’t a fidelity clause on our non-relationship, but I would be surprised if he was sleeping with anyone else. We were both so busy.

The Automatic Flowers were finally done demoing and we were into the rehearsal portion of pre-production. Ben had been cleared by the Oilers medical staff to resume workouts and the NHL schedule was so finite. Even without seeing game action post-concussion, he still went to the practices, morning skates, and games like every other player on the team. I’d never even seen Ben carry out his normal life in the daytime, unless dropping me off at the ranch after morning-afters counted. I saw him at night, at his place, and alone.

The other thing we’d agreed upon was to not interfere with each other’s lives. I was a musician in an indie rock band and he was an NHL hockey player. Ben was out of commission for the time being but soon he’d be back in game shape and ready to play for his team. He told me that he didn’t fuck the night before game days. He didn’t get much ice time, he said, so he didn’t need to be sluggish, too.

My extracurricular activity didn’t trip me up back at the ranch either. Ben and I both knew that I was accountable to my band. I could have all the fun I wanted as long as I showed up on time, prepared to work. But I would never be late anyway because Ben’s internal clock had been adjusted to Hockey Player Time for years. He was always up early, so I was up early when I spent the night with him.

I’d slept in his bed more times than my lower bunk at the studio house by the time the weekend of my rehearsal week came around. Every night was the same but different. There was no way I would be able to walk if I let him fuck me into oblivion each night, even with days off in between. A few times we’d gone at it a few different ways until we were completely spent but usually, after we’d both been satisfied, we just ended up next to each other, Ben tracing over the tattoos on my arms until we fell asleep.

He was particularly fond of outlining the umbrella tattoo on the inner side of my right elbow. I had no complaints. I liked the feeling of the feather-light pressure of his finger.

“Are you guys taking Thanksgiving off?” he asked as he traced over a raindrop.

Ben meant the band. All week long we’d been practicing and building off our demos in anticipation of recording. We started at noon and went until dinner time. We couldn’t power through it and play for seven straight hours; there was a lot of starting and stopping. But my fingers felt raw from all of the guitar I’d been playing—acoustic, electric, and bass—every day over the last week. My fingertips were ugly and calloused on the palm side.

“Yeah,” I responded. “I can’t wait.”

It was a good thing that we as a band had allotted an allowance week into our album production timeline. The Automatic Flowers were supposed to take a whole week off after a week of rehearsal. But the week was over and we all agreed that we would be better off if we practiced on for a few more days. Even at the discounted rate from our producer, recording an album was ridiculously expensive. Time was money, literally, in the studio. We wanted to maximize our studio sessions with Grant recording our material instead of wasting precious time making small adjustments to it.

So instead of taking the whole coming week off, we were going to work through the weekend, take (Canadian) Thanksgiving Monday off, then get back to work on Tuesday. We didn’t want to over edit or over rehearse either—that could do more damage than good. We wouldn’t rehearse again after we played our weekly gig, which would fall on a Thursday.

“Do you want to come to Thanksgiving dinner?”

I’d been watching Ben’s index finger trace over my skin but his question prompted me to look him in the eye. It was out of left field. We had ground rules. We’d settled into a routine the last couple of times we’d seen each other.

“What?” I didn’t screech but I didn’t hide the surprise in my voice either.

“My friend Cam and his wife, Kelsey, they _love_ Thanksgiving. Cam and I were roommates when we played together in Chicago,” Ben explained. “Anyway, it’s our first season here and they insist that they have to have their own dinner even though most of our teammates either don’t care or are going to another guy’s dinner. I’m worried that there will be a feast for like, only five people, if you don’t go with me.”

“So if I go it will be six people?” I giggled. “I’m in the apathetic group, Ben. I don’t give a shit about Canadian Thanksgiving.”

The only way The Automatic Flowers had been able to move on from Victoria was because we’d toured relentlessly for the last few years. We couldn’t have created an American fan base without playing upwards of 80 shows a year. I hadn’t been home for Thanksgiving since my last year of high school. My dad was First Nations and a small business owner. Thanksgiving wasn’t exactly at the top of my family’s holiday priorities. Actually I was pretty sure that for most Canadians it was just a nice three day weekend.

“It’s not like a date, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Ben stopped tracing over my skin. “It’s just food. Lots of food.”

That wasn’t what I was worried about _per se_. I was worried about the questions that would be asked. You couldn’t just bring the person you were sleeping with to a social event and not expect to have to answer questions. So you couldn’t bring the person you were sleeping with to Thanksgiving and reveal you were _just_ sleeping with them— _so please don’t ask any questions_ —over turkey and cranberry sauce, either.

“How would you even introduce me?” I said skeptically.

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ben’s tone was about as sarcastic as mine. “Maybe I’ll say, ‘hey, this is my friend Delia’.”

I didn’t argue with that. He was right. He could say that. In fact, it could be his pack of Thanksgiving lies. Because Ben and I, we weren’t friends. We were only benefits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/51290554707/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	5. Whitemud Drive

Parker was buckled into the seat in front of me. I could see his elbow propped up onto the ledge of the car window. Even from the back seat, the black interior of the large SUV made me feel like someone else. Like I was a pop star, driving from a press event to an ampitheatre, instead of a girl that played bass in an indie band, headed to one of Edmonton’s newish bedroom communities. But keeping me grounded, Parker and I were talking about the newest album put out by one of our favorite bands, one that had meant so much to us since the days that we were just kids jamming in a basement.

“How far did you make it before you fell asleep?” I wanted to know. “Did you hear the last song?”

Between the five of us in our own band, we’d pre-ordered one copy of the record and listed Grant’s ranch house as the shipping address. It showed up, a day later than it was supposed to, on audiophile 180-gram vinyl. Grant had a record collection more impressive than all of us combined so naturally he had several different turntables at the studio. Parker and I had set one up, with speakers, in our room, and the rest of the guys had done the same in theirs. Since the record had been charged to Rich’s credit card, they got the first spin. Parker and I had finally gotten to listen to it the night before our cruise in the SUV down Whitemud Drive.

Parker responded, “Last one I heard had like a hollow bass in the intro. I think it’s one of the ones with just a letter name?”

I didn’t have to ask him what he meant. A handful of the songs had only letters for titles: _E, Z, U, O_. But none of those were the last song. Since I had the bottom bunk in our room, I’d been responsible for turning the record over when Side A finished. I’d glanced at the dust jacket and the last song had a real title, _“Undress Me”_. I was curious as soon as I saw it and was practically gasping for air once I heard it. The title wasn’t even close to suggestive of what the song would be like.

“Okay, tonight you have to hear the last few tracks. Especially the last one,” I insisted. “It will…I swear it will break your heart but then put it back together again.”

The song had punched me right in the gut and then enveloped me in a soothing embrace. Tears had welled up in my eyes. There was a lot of music, good music, that came out of our scene, but there were few bands whose music felt as personal to me as Saves The Day.

“That’s kind of how every song on the album is though, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” I agreed. “But the last one especially.”

I didn’t think I was being overdramatic. Or maybe I was overdramatic by nature as a musician. I’d heard on more than one occasion that musicians _felt_ differently and had amplified emotions, compared to everyone else. We all had bands that took us to higher ground, and when there were bands that we could collectively agree we enjoyed, it was to a varying degree. Parker loved Saves The Day, but not as much as me. The only other person I could think of that felt the same way as me was Rich. As teenagers, we’d had times where we sat in the basement of his house, playing the first few Saves The Day albums for hours on end and talking about how well the urgency and desperation of the words and music came together, how it felt like they were songs we could have written ourselves.

“Well, anyway,” Parker noted, “there are definitely a lot more spins of the record to come. There’s a lot to learn from.”

The bands and the songs we loved were always a source of inspiration to our own songwriting. In our formative days, part of the reason we began our band was because we wanted to capture that same sense of urgency. We wanted to _make_ what meant so much to us, not just listen to it. Even though we’d had some success in the last few years, we never stopped learning from our peers. A new album from a band we deeply admired was an opportunity to study, brainstorm, and improve.

“I’m really stoked that this came out while we’re recording,” I mused out loud.

“We should probably stop talking shop now,” Parker suggested. “Ben here probably wants to throw himself out the window. How pretentious do we sound?”

From my spot in the backseat, behind Parker in the passenger seat, I had a decent view of Ben’s profile and his hands on the steering wheel. He was clean shaven and his hair was buzzed shorter than it had been in the last few weeks, short enough that he didn’t have to maintain it. I saw a thin smile appear on his lips at the mention of his name.

“I don’t mind,” Ben interjected. “The way you guys talk about music is the way people in hockey talk about hockey.”

Roughly all the time not at the studio and not out in the city with the band was time that I spent with Ben. Most of it was spent engaged in horizontal activities at his place. But the time in his truck, to and from his place, I picked the music and probably delved into too many details that didn’t make a difference to him. I knew his body and I knew what he liked behind closed doors, but beyond that, most of what I knew about Ben was through the music I played through his stereo.

He wasn’t as into the heavy music choices that I provided as I thought he would be. I’d started with the loudest and angriest selections that I had, remembering the first time I’d ridden in the Lincoln, when he said he was expecting me to play some powerviolence. It was a far cry from the music my own band played but it was still independent, still underground, still related. It was music that made me want to finger point and stage dive—something that I’d outgrown after many bruises. It got me riled up and I thrashed in my seat. Ben liked it, but he only nodded along.

I took a more ‘user friendly’ approach after that, playing music that was still hard, but less chaotic. I played melodic hardcore, which was meant for head nodding and pensive thoughts. I played some early 2000s Drive-Thru Records selections meant for singalongs. I played straight up rock music and artful indie. Ben liked Defeater, didn’t like the vocals for Something Corporate, and loved _Sink or Swim_ , the first album by The Gaslight Anthem—so much so that we’d listened to it twice.

He didn’t have to like all the music I liked, because he was only sleeping with me. But at the same time…it was comforting that he could appreciate good music. I’d always been passionate about the music I loved and the music I played. As egocentric as it was, I always thought very highly of my own music taste. Knowing Ben could appreciate some of the same music as me made me feel like I was sleeping with a guy who _wasn’t_ just some big, dumb, handsome jock, and I liked that.

Maybe that was why I’d agreed to go to Thanksgiving dinner, which we were en route to. I told him I would go but only if I could bring one of my bandmates. If I had Parker with me as a buffer, then it was less likely Ben’s friends would figure out that we were just benefits—they would just think that Ben had made some weird friends since he landed in Edmonton and we wouldn’t have to answer any questions. Ben suggested that I bring _all_ of my bandmates. It would be a feast, after all.

But even if my boys already had an idea, Parker was the only one who’d ever seen Ben, and the only one I’d explained the situation to. I loved my bandmates, and Rich and I had been getting along well, but I didn’t want to have a discussion telling the guys that we were benefiting from Thanksgiving dinner with hockey players because I was sharing benefits with one.

Parker nearly lost his shit when I asked him if he would go with me and told him about Ben’s occupation. Parker was the only gay member in our band and the only one who somewhat followed the NHL. He must’ve been the only person from British Columbia who liked hockey but also hated the Vancouver Canucks, and it was exactly why he agreed to go with me. He said he liked the thought of rubbing shoulders with some Oilers. He also said that I really needed to look Ben up on YouTube, because apparently he had some ‘interesting’ history with the Canucks, and any of our Canucks fan friends from back home would hate me if they knew who I was hooking up with.

I was glad Parker was with me. Ben was pretty quiet when we were alone together. There was no way I could get through a couple hours of niceties with strangers without a little help from one of my own friends; I knew Ben wasn’t going to speak up and be much help. So we were three on the way to his friends’ house—four, if you counted Roscoe. The kitten had been clawing at the cage door of his carrier for the last ten minutes. I’d just watched him, sitting on my hands and forcing myself not to let him out. I knew the carrier was for his own safety while we were in the car, but I couldn’t take it anymore and unlatched the door as soon as we drove past the welcome signs of a residential community. Roscoe skipped right into my lap while Ben and Parker carried on their conversation.

When we pulled into the driveway of a brick-faced townhouse, I unbuckled my seatbelt and scooped Roscoe up. Parker was first out of the car and opened the door for me. He grinned at me and wiggled his eyebrows as if to say he understood why I did what I was doing with Ben. I rolled my eyes at my friend as we followed Ben to the front door.

It was a bubbly little blonde who answered the ring of the doorbell.

“Benny, you’re here!” she exclaimed and followed up the outburst with a big hug. A few seconds passed before she noticed Parker and me standing on the steps behind Ben and then her smile reached from ear to ear. “And you brought friends!”

Ben responded with a chuckle and patted her shoulder. “Just like you asked. Where’s Barks?”

“Oh, this is awesome! Come on in, you guys!” The excitement never left her voice. “Cam is out on the deck grilling corn right now. He’ll be thrilled!”

She was a little ball of energy, a very gracious and attentive host. She made a big deal about taking our coats and having us sit down in the living room before finally introducing herself as Kelsey. Her husband Cam, ‘Barks’ as Ben called him, was the next introduction, handing all of us bottles of Sam Adams Octoberfest. The beer was malty, dark, and very seasonally appropriate.

There was a huge chance that I learned more about Kelsey and Cam in the next 15 minutes than I’d learned about Ben in the last month. Cam was from Winnipeg and they’d met in Medicine Hat—Kelsey’s hometown—when he played junior hockey there. They were high school sweethearts. Both of them were 25. They liked Edmonton because it reminded them of home. Kelsey said it was the first time in a long time that Thanksgiving Day had the feel she was looking for. As someone who’d been born and raised on Vancouver Island, and not very used to real weather, it was almost like telling me she enjoyed the sound of nails on a chalkboard. I constantly hoped that the first snowfall wouldn’t come until after my band and I had left town.

Ben hadn’t lied about the feast. We’d been the second group of people to arrive and when it was time to eat there was a group of ten people in total flanking the table. If anyone planned on propping their elbows up, they were out of luck. Between the turkey, the _eight_ different side dishes (there was even a vegan option), the spiral ham, the plates, and the wine glasses, there was barely any shoulder room. I was in between Ben and Parker, and Ben’s body was wide enough that I was practically jammed up against his ribs in the cramped space.

Just as Ben had promised, though, dinner was fine. Besides practically sitting in his lap, he didn’t touch me and no one asked what was going on between us. Cam and Ben’s teammate—I didn’t know his first name because they only referred to him as ‘Jonesy’—was the glue for most of the meal. He had great stories about the streets of downtown Nashville at 2 AM and enough puns to go around for dessert. People had side conversations among themselves. Parker and I took pictures of our food for Instagram, and then he had to explain what Instagram was to the non-iPhone users in the room.

From there, Parker became just another one of the guys in the room. I would have bet he was the most punk rock and had the best music taste of all of them. That usually meant somebody that was a bit standoffish and avoided social situations with ‘normal’ people, but actually, I also would have bet that he was the coolest guy in the room.

In one of our rare lengthy conversations, Ben told me that playing major junior hockey was the opposite of being one of the most popular kids in high school. He hadn’t hung around after school, he didn’t get to know his classmates well, and he didn’t go to any of the school dances. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do those things, but hockey meant more and it was all-encompassing.

If Ben and his teammates all had the same experiences as teenagers, well Parker definitely had them beat there. For one, he was the drummer of The Automatic Flowers, the most coveted position in the band. He knew about things—sports, math, technology, skateboarding, and literature. Plus, Parker had skater-heartthrob good looks: dimples in his olive complexion, shaggy dark hair, and puppy dog eyes. And while neither Ben nor I had gone to any dances, well, Parker used the spring dance of our senior year to announce _by the way, I’m gay_.

I smiled while I watched one of my best friends interacting with the hockey guys and their friends later, when dinner had been devoured. They were out on the deck, their voices and the chilly October air floating inside through the open sliding door.

“How long have you two been dating?” Kelsey asked me.

We were sitting in the living room, slowly swirling and drinking the last of the wine. At our feet, Roscoe was playing with his buddies, Jester and Lola, the cats that belonged to Kelsey.

I glanced at her momentarily before I looked back outside. _Shit_. Ben and Parker were standing next to each other. She must’ve thought that I’d been admiring Ben. The woman was smart. Ben had left me alone for the most part, but if she thought I was looking at him, and if she’d seen the coy smiles we’d briefly exchanged when he handed me a piece of pie earlier, then she knew.

“We’re…” I paused. “We’re not together.”

“Really? You guys look so cute together,” she suggested. “Is it because of the band thing? No intra-band dating allowed?”

“Do you mean Parker?” I squinted at her. Okay, so she didn’t know. And she did see me looking at my drummer. “He isn’t my boyfriend. Parker is gay.”

Kelsey’s cheeks went crimson as the dots connected in her head. The next thing she said was long and drawn out. “ _Ohhhhhhhh_.”

“Wait,” she followed up soon after. “Who did _you_ mean when you said you aren’t together?”

It was my turn to turn crimson. She hadn’t assumed anything about Ben and me. She hadn’t even been clued in. I’d just informed her all on my own.

“Oh, I get it.” A smirk formed on Kelsey’s lips. “You’re the one Ben’s been spending all his time with. No wonder he hasn’t come around with much frequency.”

“That’s me,” I replied weakly, well aware that I’d be in the awkward position of answering questions about the guy I was sleeping with next.

“How’s that going for you?” she wondered, “being with Ben but not being with Ben?”

If I cared what strangers thought of me, I probably would have feared to know what she thought of me, as nice of a person as she was. Kelsey obviously wasn’t one of those girls who’d latched onto a hockey player for financial security or to be seen. She was married to Cam who she’d known since _high school_. In her time being a hockey girlfriend and then a hockey wife, she’d probably seen her share of bottom feeders with their claws latched onto her husband’s teammates. Would it make a difference to her if I told her I didn’t even know about Ben’s occupation when we met at the bar, or that we were only enjoying each other until my band left town? Did it matter to me if it did make a difference to her?

Good thing I didn’t care. I’d been worried about answering questions about my non-relationship with Ben, and I was pretty sure the rest of my conversation with Kelsey was going to be a bit uncomfortable, but her judgment wasn’t going to hurt me.

“I think it’s going well,” I answered honestly. “We provide each other with what we want.”

There was no denying that Ben and I had gotten comfortable with our arrangement. We didn’t ask each other personal questions. We didn’t open up. We had sex. And let me tell you, it was amazing. Ben was…experienced. Not to say that Rich had been bad—we’d been on tour so much during the course of our relationship that any sex was good sex. Rich had never left me unsatisfied. But Ben was on a different level. He didn’t ever ask if I was okay or if it hurt or if I liked what he was doing. He already knew. He kept calling and I kept going back for more. No way did I want to stop, not until I had to leave.

Kelsey took a sip of her wine and cleared her throat. “You don’t know Benny very well, do you?”

I knew that I definitely didn’t call him _Benny_. I knew his last name, Eager (which I thought was like a pun itself), but I’d never used it to find out any information about him like Parker suggested. I didn’t know where Ben was from or exactly how old he was. He knew what I liked and I knew what he liked, which for our purposes, was more important.

I shrugged. “I guess not.”

“I’ve known Ben for a couple of years. I practically lived with him when he and Cam were roommates,” Kelsey told me. “He’s almost like a brother at this point.”

“Okay…”

“Is it okay if I tell you a few things about him?” Kelsey asked. “I know that he’s pretty quiet unless he’s chirping at guys on the ice.”

She had me curious there. Ben wasn’t much of a talker. Even on that first night at the bar, when I went home with him, I’d done most of the talking. And when he’d driven me home after, his questions had been forced, which was why I thought he wasn’t very smooth. He was a man of few words.

So I obliged Kelsey. “Sure.”

“Obviously he’s a guy and he’s not going to turn down the opportunity to sleep with someone he finds hot. But be careful with him,” she advised. “He won’t stop you from breaking his heart either. He’s more fragile than you think.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/52570367301/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	6. 103 Street

The hallway walls of the building Ben lived in had become quite familiar. There was no hesitation in my step as I made the walk from the elevator to his door, two paper cups with warm liquid in each hand. Keeping a firm grip on the cup that belonged to me, a chai tea latté that I’d been working on, I rapped my knuckles on the closed door. I took a long sip while I waited for the answer.

There were footsteps and the sound of the bolt unlocking before the door swung open.

Ben stood on the opposite side of the threshold from me. He wore a plain white t-shirt, blue jeans, and no socks. His jeans were dark-washed but not stylish in the current popular slim, skinny cut—a style that had emerged to the masses out of independent subculture in the last several years. I’d been in high school when the only people wearing straight-cut and skinny jeans were the punks and the skaters, my own crowd, and I’d been there for the fashion takeover, when my friends and I stopped having to take our jeans to the dry cleaners’ to be altered, because they became a standard cut. Anyway, Ben had no business in skinny jeans. He was wide everywhere from the waist down. He had big hips, muscular tree trunks for legs, and the biggest ass I’d ever seen on a man.

“Hey,” he greeted.

“Hi.” I held out the unopened paper cup, seal on the lid still in one piece, in front of him. “Here. This is for you.”

Ben gestured for me to enter his dwelling. “Thanks.”

I left my slip-on shoes at the door. When I got to the living room, the TV was off and Roscoe was playing with his mouse chew toy. The toy had a bell inside it, which stopped ringing when Roscoe spotted me. The kitten dropped the toy on the floor and sauntered over. I smiled. Roscoe wasn’t a _fraidy cat_ around me. The two of us had bonded.

Sometimes, after Ben and I had sex, we would hear the kitten scratching at the door of the bedroom as we were settling down for the night. As soon as Ben opened the door, Roscoe would march in like he owned the place, tail and nose raised in the air. He would maneuver his way into my arms and stay there for however long he wanted. It was funny, Ben said, because when it was just the two of them alone in the apartment and nearing the end of the week before the sheets were changed, Roscoe would roll around on the side of the bed I always slept in, as if trying to mark the place he knew I would be with his own scent.

I set my drink on the breakfast nook before I crouched down and scooped Roscoe up into my arms. He was still small but no longer tiny; he’d grown a bit since the first time I met him. Ben was studying the cup in his hand. He discarded the lid onto the nearest counter and took one big sip before commenting. “Well, it’s not Tim Hortons, that’s for sure.”

“Nope,” I shook my head. “You like it?”

He drank from the cup again. “That’s really good actually. A little…flowery. But good.”

Even before I’d asked, I knew that it would be. In my last two years of high school, I’d worked at Second Cup. It had been the preferred chain specialty coffee shop in Canada before Starbucks took over the world. Save for the new introductions since I’d left Victoria for greener music pastures, I had the menu memorized and I’d tried all of the drinks at least once. I knew exactly what to get Ben.

On almost any day of the week, most of the selections at Tim Hortons were perfectly fine. But this wasn’t one of those days. Ben wanted relaxation and jasmine tea was just the solution.

The purpose of my visit to his place wasn’t for our usual activity. Tonight he wanted company and he wanted to relax. When he asked me what kind of tea I thought he should get, I told him not to bother, and that I would get something on the way.

I’d finally taken Parker’s advice and checked up on Ben online. He was 27 and from Ottawa. His hockey position was left wing and he wasn’t exactly what you would call a skill player in the NHL. Ben rarely played 10 minutes a game, if even that. He got into fights. He sat in the penalty box a lot. A role player was what Parker had called him. And he was definitely not a popular guy in Vancouver—although some girl had flashed him while he’d been sitting in the box there in the previous season’s playoffs.

When I asked him about the penalty box flasher, once I insinuated that I better understood who he was in his hockey life, I think it was easier for him to talk to me in general. I understood his silence better. I’d never mistaken Ben for a blockhead, but I’d never realized that a lot of his silence had to do with overthinking.

He did have a lot to worry about. He wasn’t like the majority of his teammates. He had to be _“good enough”_ or he wasn’t going to play. And if he was going to play, he had to be willing to get into a fight. Ben had only played in two games so far, on consecutive nights. The first was an Oilers home game and the second was a quick road trip to Calgary that they’d just gotten home from 24 hours ago.

The night before the first game, I’d been with him like I was now. He’d wanted the same thing: company. I remembered one of our ground rules. No sex before game nights. I didn’t protest or try to get him to break his own rule because after all our benefits, he was slowly becoming my friend (and maybe a little bit because his big bed was way more comfortable than my lower bunk at the studio house). Later than usual he’d picked me up from the ranch. We watched the Food Network and cuddled in bed. He was thankful. He told me that having me there, and not wanting to disturb my rest forced him into relaxing and going to sleep instead of reminding himself what not to do wrong in his season debut. I wasn’t sure how much rest he’d actually gotten because when I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, he’d been tossing and turning in his sleep until I held him against my chest.

But I was back for another night before a game day, and this time I’d brought reinforcements in the form of a flowery, soothing tea. It was my hope that he would sleep how he usually slept after I got him off. Just because we weren’t emotionally invested in each other, it didn’t mean I didn’t give a shit about his well-being. I could relate to overthinking at night as a musician. It didn’t matter so much during the writing process, but being in the studio and recording, it was important to be ready to go whenever Grant said so. We didn’t have the budget to have a bad day in the studio.

“So how was your game last night?” I asked Ben. I set Roscoe down on the couch so I could take off my jacket.

“We lost.”

“Oh.” I shrugged the jacket off and dropped it onto the armrest of the couch, where Roscoe immediately relocated to thereafter. It only held his interest for a few seconds before he jumped down from the couch and went off to the open hallway closet that was his sacred area in the apartment. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Parker had told me that the Oilers team Ben played on wasn’t very good, and that any win they earned, they _really_ earned. I wondered what that was like, being in the NHL but being on a team that lost a lot. And how exactly did someone gain the mental toughness to be in a line of work where success was based on wins and losses? The Automatic Flowers, we’d played to audiences that weren’t very receptive, but we’d never been booed offstage or told that we just couldn’t hack it with our peers. Indie fans were supportive of their artists and even appreciated seeing the evolution of a band.

Instead of continuing on with the topic of the Oilers’ loss in Calgary, Ben commented on the outfit that I revealed once my jacket was off, “Always with the polka dots.”

Everyone had a style safe haven. Polka dots were mine. Any shirt or dress with polka dots on it called out to me. I was an equal opportunity polka dot lover, appreciative of all colors and sizes. A huge chunk of the wardrobe I’d brought to Edmonton with me consisted of polka dots. Tonight it was a red mini dress adorned with white polka dots, paired with footless black tights.

“You know how I do,” I responded as I took the few steps back to the island and grabbed my drink from the counter.

Ben moved closer to me so that we were face to face and I had to tilt my chin to look up at him. “You’re like...Minnie Mouse,” he said.

“What?” I laughed.

“Your little polka dot dresses, your pin-up girl eyes,” Ben listed off, “and your perfect hourglass shape.”

The room instantly felt ten degrees warmer as I stood under Ben’s gaze. I had no idea he’d been paying so much attention to my details. I mean, most of the times we had sex I’d already wiped away all the traces of my makeup and he didn’t complain. I didn’t think he paid much attention to my material appearance because he still slept with me anyway.

He set the paper cup in his hand on the counter, then took the one I was holding and set it right beside his. He broke the boundaries of our personal spaces when his large hands settled on my hips.

“And, of course, your cute little button nose,” his voice dropped an octave. He went a step further and touched the tip of his nose to mine and shook his head from side to side—an Eskimo kiss.

When he tapped my nose with his finger, I smirked at him as I retorted, “Maybe that’s why Roscoe can’t get enough of me. Cat and mouse.”

“Maybe I’ll just start calling you Minnie from now on,” Ben teased, placing a kiss, with his lips, on my jawline. “ _Mins_ for short.”

We started kissing for real then, easing some of the sexual tension he had built in a matter of minutes. It wasn’t supposed to be a typical night. We were just supposed to sleep. But there was another way to get him relaxed—no tea needed—wasn’t there? Ben’s grip on my hips was tight, holding my body flush against his as we stood, making out. I could feel that his pants had already tightened.

Ben’s tongue roamed my mouth freely, but slowly, after that. I bit his bottom lip appreciatively after he walked us backwards to the couch, pulling me into his lap when he sat down: he was a foot taller than me and making out on my tiptoes wasn’t exactly comfortable. I kissed him hungrily when he moved his hand up my torso, over my ribs up to the underside of my right breast. He was good at that, making me want him. Ben wasn’t a selfish benefits buddy. He liked fucking me and he wanted me to enjoy being fucked.

His back was right up against the cushion of the loveseat and I was straddling him, my legs tucked underneath me and my knees on either side of his hips. The bulge in Ben’s pants was begging to be freed, pressed up against me where the skirt of my dress had bunched up at my waist. He went for the zipper down the center at the back of my dress, but the fabric it was made of didn’t stretch well, and my arms wouldn’t bend in such a way that the two of us could get it off my body without ending our skin to skin contact.

I flicked the button on Ben’s jeans undone before I stood to take off the dress. He took in the sight of me as I dropped each shoulder and stepped out of it and then removed my tights as well, leaving my polka-dot comfort in a heap on the floor. I knew he was staring at the corner where my stomach and my hip bone met—his favorite part of me, he’d said one night. I could have guessed even without him telling me. I was a petite girl, but not in a boring straight line. The running hours I put in with my bandmates kept my assets defined. My curvy hips were the perfect resting place for Ben’s hands when he pumped in and out of me when we had sex.

His jeans had joined my dress on the floor and he was down to his boxer briefs and t-shirt when I was down to my underwear straddling his lap again. My bra and panties were mismatched, black push-up and evergreen boyshorts. When Ben had told me we were just going to cuddle and sleep, I’d believed him. Anyway, he didn’t care about the logistics of my undergarments as much as he cared about what was underneath them. In one quick motion, he freed my breasts from their confines, undoing the clasp in the back and then pulling at one of the cups until the bra was out of the way and I was left bare from the waist up.

My hands landed at Ben’s broad shoulders as he took a nipple in his mouth and flicked his tongue a few times in succession. The sensation it sent through my body caused me to throw my head back and grind my hips into him, his erection pressing just under my belly. I reached between us and stroked him through his shorts. He gave some attention to my other nipple, pinching it, just barely. I stroked harder, urging him on, and he placed a kiss in the hollow between my breasts.

“Fuck,” he muttered against my skin.

I smirked and went for it, reaching beneath the fabric of the waistband and to the base of his cock. He caught my wrist and pulled my hand out of his shorts.

“ _Fuck_.” His swear word was more prominent this time. “Delia, I…I just remembered I don’t have any more condoms. The last time we…”

The last time we’d done what we were about to do. Four nights earlier. We’d done the dirty until I was too tired to move. He played in his first game of the season two days later and, in advance, we’d just wanted to make up for what we were going to miss. We’d been so well behaved the night before his season debut, not breaking any rules.

Pressing a kiss to his temple, I restarted what I’d been doing. Maybe Ben could just forget about the tension building in his shorts, but I couldn’t. He’d gotten me worked up and horny. It was his fault for flirting with me and kissing me instead of just drinking his tea. I was practically naked already, down to my last scrap of fabric. There was just no way I was going to bed without getting off.

“No, Delia,” he forced my hand away and held it in his palm so that my fingers were locked. “I don’t want to be teased if I can’t have you tonight. I forgot to buy more and I didn’t think we were going to—”

“It’s fine,” I promised. “I’m on the pill.”

That got his attention. He leaned back into the couch, as if that would help him see the honesty on my face any better. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

The tone of his next statement was shaped as another question, “This whole time?”

“Well, you never asked,” I shrugged.

If there was an award for most considerate bed buddy of the year, Ben would win it uncontested. He’d probably have a mantle full of them. We’d never fucked drunk and we’d never done it without a condom. He stashed them in the drawer of the nightstand beside his bed. Without complaint, he did what he had to to be safe on his part. He didn’t bother to ask if I was doing my part. He didn’t know that I’d been on the pill since I was 18, when I was old enough to have true doctor-patient confidentiality without a parent’s input.

“You’re…” he trailed off. “You trust me?”

“Do I have a reason not to?” I wondered, searching his crystal eyes.

Ben hadn’t turned out to be what I expected. He was somewhere in between what I thought of him on the first night I met him and what I thought when I found out he was a hockey player. He was in the NHL but he wasn’t a star. He wasn’t a manwhore and he didn’t get all the pussy he wanted just because he was hot. I got the sense that, even though he was almost five years older than me and was thoroughly skilled in the bedroom, our arrangement was the first casual hookup that went beyond one night for both of us, not just me.

“No,” he answered my question, and I knew he wouldn’t be anything but honest.

“Well then,” I paused to remove his shirt and nip at his earlobe, “let’s get you good and relaxed.”

Ben groaned and hooked both his thumbs to the sides of my little green boyshorts. He pushed the fabric down my hips as far as it would go with me straddling him. Unceremoniously, he lifted my hips and one of my knees and got up from under me. Somehow I ended up still in the same spot on my own, facing the leather couch cushions and sinking into the top of one for support as Ben slipped my underwear past my knees and down my ankles from behind. When my legs were freed, so was Ben’s dick. His hard-on was near full size and I felt it prick against my skin when he ran his fingers up my inner thigh.

At the site of the growing heat between my legs, he ran one long finger over my slit and I bucked against his touch. He added a finger and then rubbed along the edges of my nether lips. I was wet with anticipation. I knew it and he knew it. His touch was firm but soft. He told me he didn’t want to be teased but that was _exactly_ what he was doing to me. My ass kept backing up toward him. I was waiting for his fingers to slip inside me and offer me instant relief. They never did.

But Ben wasn’t cruel. Instead, he gave me something better. In one fluid motion, he separated my thighs further apart and entered me from behind. We both sighed with pleasure at the contact as his tip moved past my entrance. His thrusts were slow at first, each time going a little deeper until he was up to the hilt, my wetness coating him completely. He felt even bigger as he took me from behind, my pussy full of him.

He leaned over me momentarily, his torso pressed into my spine as he set his pace. I turned my cheek to look back at him and he kissed the back of my shoulder. He shifted the positioning of his hands, one flat against my diaphragm and the other cupping a breast. My body was fully engaged in the pleasure being granted, my hips moving in their own rhythmic fashion in response to his strokes. I moaned when he drew circles around my nipple, sending the sensations of sex throughout my body, spreading from between my legs up toward my stomach but also from my chest right through me to my back as well.

I felt Ben all over me. When he followed the kiss up with his teeth, biting into my shoulder gently, to let me know that it felt just as good for him, I knew I was a goner. My knuckles weren’t turning white from gripping onto the back of the couch so tightly. Actually my arms felt numb from all the pleasure coursing through my body and my hands kept slipping on the pebbled leather of the back cushion. I settled for support from the couch, because I was going to fall chin-first onto the seat cushion if Ben continued to keep up what he was doing. I leaned further forward and pulled my elbows out, bending them so that my forearms rested flat on top of the back of the couch and my temple was pressed to my fingertips.

When I shifted, so did Ben, and his cock never withdrew from me completely even though I was further forward up against the couch. With his tip just barely grazing my entrance, he stood upright and moved his hands back to my hips. His next thrust was devastatingly good, and the next, and the next. Even facing the couch, my jaw dropped and my eyelids drooped shut. My decision to gain leverage for my arms had completely changed the angle with which he entered me. Each stroke was in and up at the perfect severe angle, sliding just past my most sensitive spot.

“Ben,” I hummed his name. “Oh, God.”

My hip movement became more erratic, trying to get into the right position where he would hit the spot and send me to paradise. I should’ve known better to know that he was a step ahead. He didn’t let up on me, forcing my body to take the pleasure that had me teetering. He guided my hips up, my ass rising further in the air, and then he drove deep. My breath became ragged.

A languid sob escaped my throat. He’d done it. He was fucking me in just the right spot. I was vibrating all over. Just a few more of the same hard strokes, quickly, and I would be over the edge. But Ben had me from behind and he was in control of the fire in between my legs. When I was on the verge of seeing stars, he slowed down and thrust with much less intensity. He halted and let go of me, the perfect fit of his body leaving mine.

I scrambled on the couch to turn around and confront him. He was still there, his dick standing at attention for me. Was that it? Did he just stop me from floating off into an orgasm because he wanted a blow job? Sitting on the couch, my juices probably staining the leather, I scooted to the edge and went to touch his thigh. Before I could make contact, he was crouched in front of me so we were almost eye level. Completely confused, I raised an eyebrow at him.

He leaned in and rubbed his nose against mine, as he was so fond of doing, and whispered one word, “Bedroom.”

Before I could respond with anything sassy or complain that I’d already been so close to reaching orgasm in the spot where I was, he lifted me up from the couch. With one strong arm wrapped around my waist and the other under the back of my thigh, he stood up, bringing me with him. My weight landed centered around his palms. I wrapped my arms and legs around him to help out as he adjusted his hands, both underneath my thighs as he walked us past Roscoe’s nook and towards the bedroom. I imagined that Ben had bench pressed my weight before, but I was sure he’d never done any lifting in the gym with the distraction of an erection before.

The bed was unmade, sheets all pushed to one side. Ben set me down strategically so that my head fell against a pillow – always so considerate. It took him less than a second to turn on the lamp atop the nightstand before he was hovering over me and taking my calves in his hands. He was on his knees, much like the position I’d been in on the couch, his balls and cock pressed to my inner thigh. He pushed my legs high, so that my knees were bent at a ninety degree angle to my belly button, and then his length entered me. It was a tight fit, but he slipped past my folds without resistance. I was still completely soaked.

His gaze was concentrated on the spot where our bodies became one, watching his dick disappear inside me as he stroked out a new pace for us. I breathed out as my muscles began to readjust. Did I want to know why he had stopped fucking me from behind on the couch? Yes. But it was hard to form words, let alone think, when he had me in a frenzy again already. I watched him as his blue eyes trailed up my body, to the slight bounce of my breasts against my chest, then to my face.

The tiniest of smiles appeared on the corners of his lips. “Sorry…I wanted…” he panted an explanation as he continued to screw me, “I wanted to be…able to see you.”

He kept his gaze on me as and a chuckle escaped my throat. Wow. The reason I was on my back was so he could see his handiwork. He wanted to watch me enjoying him fucking me. He wanted to see me fall apart as he sent me over the edge.

I looked up at him for as long as I could, letting him see the pleasure in my eyes and taking in the desire in his as my hips met his thrusts. I even tried to blink back the fuzziness that crept into the corners of my vision while he rocked my entire body. But I had to succumb. My eyes fluttered shut and I bit my lip when he adjusted my right leg so that my foot was firmly planted against the bed. With my back to the mattress, he wouldn’t be able to get to my sweet spot, but now his pubic bone brushed up against my clit with each thrust.

My inner walls began to tighten around his stiffness. I was thankful when I felt his lips brush over mine, our stomachs touching, his hands leaving my body so he could support himself on his elbows. The angle of his penetration was not disturbed, just harder, just more sensation for my clit. His tongue slipped into my mouth and we both moaned as he flicked it over mine in time to his strokes. I arched my back, as if I could take him deeper, and laid my hands on the knotted muscles in the center of Ben’s lower back, pressing his body into mine with all the strength I had. I didn’t care how well he could see me anymore. I needed something to hold on to when I came.

Ben picked up our pace and I knew he was close, too. My left leg, which he’d previously held in the air, ghosted up at his side. He pulled away from my mouth and we both gasped for air, me moaning and him hissing. Our fucking was up to double time of his original strokes and that was it for me. I cried out as I clamped down around him, seeing the stars behind closed eyes. The muscles of my inner walls squeezed him and my movements were frantic as I came, my back arching into a perfect bridge and my hands clawing up his back.

I shuddered against him as I rode out the shorebreaking waves of pleasure. Ben plowed into me until he couldn’t anymore, when my walls held onto him too tight for him to pull out. He slid an arm under me to draw me closer and dropped his head. He grunted a string of vowels into my shoulder as he went limp and bottomed out, bursting inside me.

My heart thumped as heavy as our breathing once we were both sated. Damn, it felt good to let go after so much build up. We’d been sleeping with each other for a while, but he’d never done me like that, getting me close to the edge and stopping abruptly just to get me riled up again. My skin was damp with sweat after being worked so hard. When I opened my eyes, Ben was staring back at me, probably in the same way that he had when I came for him.

His irises darted in their sockets, studying my face in its post-coital glow. He didn’t say anything, just kissed me once and grinned, a token of thanks for our shared experience. He was still nestled inside me and he didn’t pull out until he’d rolled us onto our sides, facing each other and in close. I felt hazy as Ben rolled his fingers over my spine, alternating between sleepy and wide awake each time I blinked.

I would be the first to speak once I’d caught my breath. It was a smart remark and came with a smirk. “Do you feel relaxed now?”

“Oh, Mins,” I felt the rumble of Ben’s laughter against my body after he used his new found nickname for me, “now I’m _way_ too relaxed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/53700534432/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	7. Sooke Road

Perfect. We’d had sex on a night we weren’t supposed to and now Ben was way too relaxed. A giggle erupted in my throat and he flashed a big grin, all straight teeth, all pearly white. He pulled my right arm until it was rested straight across his chest. He took to tracing over my umbrella tattoo as he usually did before we fell asleep. Tonight there was no Roscoe curled up between us. There was no sign of the kitten; he wasn’t scratching at the door. Presumably, our feline friend had fallen asleep in his own special corner out in the apartment.

“Do you have a favorite tattoo?” Ben wondered as he traced over the peak of the umbrella’s dome.

“Mmmhmm,” I mumbled.

“Is this it?”

Was his favorite tattoo of mine also my favorite, he meant. I shook my head. I took my arm back from him and shifted so I was on my stomach, the entire front side of my naked body pressed to the bed. My opposite arm provided extra cushion for my chin and I used the pointer finger of my free hand, the one that had been draped across Ben, to point at a specific spot, just under my shoulder blade, among a group of tattoos.

“The bird?” he guessed correctly.

“It’s a hummingbird.” I went on to explain while his finger touched the bold lines and dark colours, “There’s a lot of douchebag bullshit so-called tribal art ink out there, but none of it looks like this. The hummingbird means something to the First Nations peoples on both sides of the Georgia Strait. My dad grew up on a reservation on the southern tip of the Vancouver Island, not far from Victoria. When I was a kid, along with my _Berenstain Bears_ books, he told me the stories from his culture that had been told to him as a kid. I always liked the story of the hummingbird the most.”

Hummingbirds usually got a reputation associated with softness and femininity. The hummingbird permanently marked into my skin was anything but. Traditional Coast Salish art never looked soft or cute. It was boldly beautiful with minimalistic rounded patterns and thick lines. The colours always matched the boldness; the pigments were the same shades as those that had been created by my father’s ancestors with the materials that had been available to them.

For my hummingbird, I’d gone with primary colours: deep red and navy blue. It was different than my sailor tattoos or band tattoos. It was my favourite and I was proud of it, a reminder that I—just another mixed heritage kid from Victoria—had roots in a people with a rich history. Nothing was more Canadian than being born of a people who had been the first people in Canada, long before it came to be called a country.

Ben traced over the beak and then to the bird’s more intricate designs. “That’s…that’s really meaningful.”

If only I could say that all my tattoos were like that. I liked all of my ink, and had gotten it for a reason, but I didn’t have the same kind of story for even half of my tattoos as I did for the hummingbird. My left calf was neatly decorated in band logos and images from albums that meant a lot to me. I loved my hummingbird tattoo the most, but of the places I was tattooed, my leg was my favourite and those tattoos had nothing to do with my family history.

Flipping over so I was on my back again, I sat up for a second and pulled at the sheet that was crumpled up and ignored at our feet. My shoulder was pressed up against Ben’s once my head was cushioned by the pillow once more, the sheet pulled up to my chest. I leaned into him and held my right hand up in the air, in front of our faces.

“I have this.” I curled my fingers and hooked my thumb under my index finger, touching the silver jewelry that adorned my middle finger. “This one’s a raven.”

The wrap ring was a Coast Salish interpretation of a raven hand-carved into sterling silver. It was related to the hummingbird both aesthetically and meaningfully. An appropriate tangent to our discussion, I thought. Ben’s palm met mine and he brought my hand closer to his face. The small details were hard to see, especially in low light, and his reading glasses were nowhere to be found.

“I’ve never seen the way the lines curve on here before,” he noted. Of course he had seen the ring before—I only ever took it off when I was in the shower—but not directly in his line of sight. Besides, he was usually preoccupied with the umbrella tattoo.

“My dad knew that he wanted to propose to my mom long before he had the money for a diamond ring. So he gave her this, temporarily, until he could get the one they both wanted,” I told Ben, thinking fondly of my parents. “I almost think this is as valuable as the real thing. An artist put their heart into shaping and carving this. Doesn’t that take more work than popping in a diamond? I know that my mom loved this ring too, even after her real ring and her wedding ring. There’s a picture of her holding me as a baby and I can see it. She just moved it over to her right hand.”

Ben pulled my hand down and held it to his chest. “That’s a really sweet story. So she gave it to you once you were old enough for it to fit?”

“Yes. Well, my dad did,” I replied. “My mom died a few months after my first birthday. My dad kept a lot of her things for me that he thought I might want when I got older.”

A few beats of silence passed, like they always did, when I told a person that I hadn’t had a mother for a long time. It was always an awkward moment, more for the other person than for me, as they figured out what to say next. I tried not to bring it up, to avoid the awkward moment, but sometimes, like with the tattoo and the ring, it was unavoidable.

“Was that rough on you?” Ben asked.

A silent sigh of relief escaped my lips. He might have handled the awkward moment better than anyone I had ever met. Usually it was followed by a profuse apology and a pep talk about how strong I was. But surprisingly Ben knew better. He knew I wasn’t looking for sympathy or an apology for something that he didn’t have anything to do with.

“Not really. I don’t even remember her,” I spoke truthfully. “You can’t miss what you never had, right? My dad never remarried either. He did okay, raising a daughter all by himself.”

I’d never felt the loss of losing my mother. I had no recollection of her ceasing to exist in my life; I’d been too young when it happened. I didn’t remember her and only knew her from pictures and home video. My dad was probably the one who suffered most from losing her. It couldn’t have been easy on him to raise a little girl from diapers to adolescence all by himself. Dating wasn’t at the forefront of his thoughts when he had a child and small business to run. He’d never wanted me to suffer from not having a mother. My dad wasn’t the best father in the world but he did do his best to be both parents for me.

“So you didn’t grow up around the rest of your family?” Ben wondered.

“Not really.” I shook my head against the pillow. “My mom’s family is from the Maritimes. I’ve probably seen them more on tour than I did growing up. And my dad’s side of the family, his immediate family, a lot of them live on the reservation where he grew up. I’ve only been there a few times. He’s not exactly Mr. Popular on ‘the rez’.”

“Oh?”

“He went to university and never moved back home. He married a white woman and raised his daughter on his own,” I shared. “He might be a registered tribal member but...he’s just a run of the mill small businessman. He owns a Second Cup franchise in Victoria.”

Like I said, my dad wouldn’t win any Man of the Year awards, he’d just done what he could. He was proud to be aboriginal, but as I’d once heard my grandmother say to him, not proud enough. There were inherent expectations and responsibilities set on his shoulders by his community in Becher Bay that would remain unfulfilled. He wasn’t supposed to leave the rez forever and he wasn’t supposed to be so distant from the community that gave him life.

But he didn’t care. According to him, his only responsibility was to raise his daughter. He didn’t fail at that. Looking back, I wondered just how far he’d had to dig into his softer side to accommodate having a daughter. When I was a kid he would join me while I played with my dolls and he helped spread the glitter on my craft projects. He paid for my piano lessons and went to the recitals, and he wasn’t angry when I started focusing my energy on the guitar later on. When I was a giggling 13-year-old with my friends, showing interest in boys, he knew how to set boundaries. In high school, when I became a moody teenager, when Rich became my best friend, he just let me be.

My dad let me work part-time at his Second Cup for two years and save enough money to _leave_ Victoria. The first gig The Automatic Flowers ever played was at the café on Open Mic Night. He was okay with it. He wanted me to be happy. Anyway, what could he say when he’d left home, too?

Most of my thoughts I kept to myself. Ben didn’t need to hear all about my parents or my childhood. Instead I made a mental note to call my dad the next day and see how he was doing. I hoped I would remember to do it in the morning. It would be a busy day: the band would be in the studio until dinner time and after that Parker and I were going to the Oilers game.

“Anyway,” I yawned into Ben’s shoulder before pulling my arms under the bed sheet, “I’ve overshared. Your turn now.”

I wasn’t supposed to tell him all that I had. Not when we were just sleeping with each other. But I knew he’d level the field. Ben was fair. For instance, he’d seen my place of work, having seen The Automatic Flowers play gigs twice now around the city. He’d gotten an up and close look at my world. He thought it was only fair, now that he could play hockey again, that I get to see his…if I wanted to.

For the rest of October, all but one of the Oilers’ games would be home games. I’d been hesitant but when I ran the idea by Parker, he said that we absolutely had to go if Ben was offering to get us tickets. After all, Ben had the hook-up for tickets: he was on the team roster. The market price to see a Canadian NHL team (even a bad one) at their home rink was insane. Ben offered to just get us the tickets but we refused—we didn’t want to feel like we owed him anything—so he got us a great deal. We were going to the next night’s game. Ben had seen me on stage, and we were friends, so I would go to see him on the ice. Fair was fair.

I waited for Ben to keep everything even and to tell me something that he probably shouldn’t.

“Well,” he cleared his throat, “what do you want to know?”

Did that make him guarded or an open book? His implication was that he would tell me anything I wanted to know but first I had to ask. I fidgeted under the covers. What he would end up telling me was not important—I just didn’t want to be alone in oversharing. If he participated, then it was okay that I’d crossed the benefits line this time.

Generic were the first kind of questions I could come up with. “Is this what you always pictured for yourself? Living on the 20th floor and getting paid to play your favourite sport?”

He blinked a few times, thinking, before he answered. “I always wanted to be a professional hockey player, to make it to the NHL. I can’t be anything but grateful for what I have.”

“But…” I sensed hesitation.

“But…” he repeated after my encouragement. “I’m not as far along in my vision of myself as I thought I would be.”

“What’s missing?” I wanted to know.

When I’d looked Ben up online, it wasn’t just his age and hometown that popped up. I didn’t just see the videos of his fights and the drunk girl flashing him while he sat in the penalty box. There was something that had made my eyes widen. I saw a picture of him, donning a Chicago Blackhawks jersey and a magnificent beard on his face, smiling proudly as he raised the most recognizable trophy in sports over his head. I even checked what was written on his Wikipedia page to be sure, and sure enough, it was true: he was a Stanley Cup Champion.

Admittedly, I was far from a hockey or NHL expert. But I knew for a fact that that was the culmination of a hockey career. That was what little kids who watched _Hockey Night in Canada_ on Saturday nights dreamed of doing. Ben had already done it. I was very curious to know how he was lacking compared to his vision of what he wanted for himself.

“I want to be a family man,” he revealed. “I want to have a wife and raise kids with her. Honestly, I feel like I’ve been ready to be a father for the last couple of years. At the very least, I kinda thought I’d be married by now.”

There was a good chance that I stopped breathing for a few seconds. I suddenly felt antsy and out of place. Damn. I thought Ben was going to tell me that he wanted to be better at his sport all-around: more ice time and more points. But married? Kids? Ben’s vision of what was missing from his life at 27 didn’t even have anything to do with hockey.

What the hell was he doing wasting his time with me for? We were both very clear on the terms that we were just having sex and our arrangement was temporary. I wasn’t leading him on. We were just killing time.

“Ben, I…” I began but stopped myself.

His aims for as soon as possible were not even in my foreseeable future. I’d been about to tell him that he should stop wasting his time. My own selfishness stopped me. Just because it was going nowhere, it didn’t mean it was worthless. I looked forward to the nights in his bed, an escape, a time to put aside all my work in the studio from earlier in the day. Ben had become part of my Edmonton experience.

It wasn’t always easy to be around my bandmates. Just like every other human being, I needed some ‘me time’, too. We, as a band, spent _so_ much time together and it was great. Being with my best friends wasn’t always what I needed though. Especially now, it was our first week in the studio recording songs that I’d written about Rich, and that Rich had written about me. I felt like I had to be tough and guarded to a certain extent. It was probably stupid of me, because I knew we would be releasing the songs out into the world and we would be playing them on tour, and I was fine with that. But being around the closest people in my life, and laying down my most personal thoughts on track, it was nerve-wracking because they were the ones who knew me best and had to continue to coexist with me every day when it was all over.

That was the complete opposite of my time with Ben. It wasn’t going to last and maybe that was why I felt okay exposing myself to him. He saw all of me, my body and my oversharing, and it was okay. He accepted me.

“It’s okay,” Ben said, as if reading my mind. “Being here with you right now is fun, too.”

Now I understood what his friend Kelsey had meant when she talked to me at Thanksgiving, warning me to be cautious. He was a conundrum. He slept with me because he could, because he liked to, because he hadn’t found The One yet. Ben was the best fuck I’d ever had. But his goals? They were fragile, as he was, because they were of love. And he was a romantic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/54327159690/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	8. Wayne Gretzky Drive

“This is so beautiful.”

“This is…really weird,” I countered.

Parker and I were at the Oilers game. The arena was dark, multiple copies of the team’s logo being projected and swirled onto the surface of the ice. Other than the starting lineups being flashed on the jumbotron, light was cast on one spot: where the open home bench door met the ice. The ‘symbol’ of the team—the replica oil derrick—was flush against the bench entrance and each player skated through it as he took the ice for a few laps before the drop of the puck.

There were few times I felt truly out of place. Building my life around the music scene I was a part of, there weren’t many situations that I (or my friends, for that matter) was put into where I felt that way. But this was one of those times. Merely being a Canadian and understanding my country’s passion for hockey did nothing to help.

The fans inside Rexall Place, nearly all of them, donned different variations of copper and blue jerseys. My friend and I both wore black jeans, black jackets, and black shoes. I learned quite quickly when we’d started touring why black attire was a staple of indie and alternative music: it was the colour that looked best on stage. Everyone in the band owned a lot of it. Parker, the hockey fan between the two of us, wore a Comeback Kid shirt based on the old school Winnipeg Jets logo. I went with the only deep blue shirt I had, with polka dots, of course, that matched the white Peter Pan collar.

We were seated on the terrace on the player benches side, which meant that we were in one of the mid-level rows of the second level. We were on the aisle but otherwise surrounded by Oilers jerseys, scarves, and hats. I’d already overheard partial hockey conversations that I’d never dreamed of having.

When the team logos that were projected onto the ice stopped moving and the players from both teams, save for the starters, were back at their benches, the public address announcer prompted everybody to stand for the singing of the anthems. The Oilers’ opponent for the night was the Minnesota Wild—not a very popular team, but a division rival for Edmonton (all of this according to Parker)—so _The Star-Spangled Banner_ was sung first.

The anthem of our nation followed with slightly more enthusiasm and cheering at the end. I didn’t think I’d even been to an event where the anthem was sung since my high school graduation. Once the ceremonial puck drop had taken place and the carpet rolled away, the arena lights shone white and bright. Parker took his phone out of his pocket and snapped a photo of the opening faceoff to share on Instagram.

I couldn’t help but pay as much attention to the crowd as I did to the game. I’d seen hockey plenty of times on TV before. Just because I didn’t follow the NHL and its players, it didn’t mean I was clueless to the game itself. I knew how to track the puck, I was used to the sounds of the game, and I knew enough not to have to ask questions during stoppages. What I wasn’t used to were live, in-person hockey crowds. The crowd was what made me feel awkward.

Fans were flashed on the jumbotron for most stoppages. They made me cringe. I swear every guy that made it onto the screen during the first media timeout might as well have had ‘douchebag’ stamped across his forehead. There was _Jersey Shore_ hair and there were 1999-style silver chain necklaces. One guy lifted up his jersey to obnoxiously show off a chiseled, hairless chest. Another held up the beer in his hand and kissed the plastic cup for the camera a few times. I liked drinking as much as the next Canadian, but I was pretty sure I never wanted to be friends with a beer kisser.

“Do me a favour?” Parker nudged me.

“What’s that?”

“Throw my cymbals at my face if I’m ever caught doing that,” he rolled his eyes.

It was funny because I probably knew a dozen musicians who loved hockey, especially friends who were in hardcore bands. Hockey and hardcore, they said, were perfect together. Hockey was to other major sports as hardcore was to the mainstream; hockey was like the hardcore of sports. But my friends who played music and loved hockey were crazy about the sport, the teams, and the players. They never mentioned an affinity for the _fans_. Now I understood why.

The girls were a different story, too. They were very intimidating. I didn’t know what was scarier: the superficial or the superfans.

The superficial were drop dead gorgeous. I didn’t know if it was by makeup or nature, but they were flawless. Extremely thin, perfect hair flowing in curls down their backs, and well-manicured long nails. They probably didn’t have calloused fingertips from hours spent playing guitar. They were a little too obvious as well: talking about the eye candy on the team and bemoaning which of the guys had wives or girlfriends they weren’t willing to cheat on. Girls who looked that good and talked that way, without any actual hockey substance, were interested in getting one thing and one thing only from the athletes on the ice just because their last names were stitched onto the backs of game-worn NHL jerseys.

On the other hand, the female superfans were…too informed. Everything they said was a comment on a play or a stat or analysis of a player’s tendencies. They didn’t just cheer or clap. No, they were yelling at guys— _by their first names_ —to smarten up and show more heart. One woman in our section talked about one of the guys being from the Czech Republic, the fact that he played junior hockey in Quebec, and how far he’d come since the team drafted him several years ago. She knew a lot about him. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she knew his pants size (which she probably could gloat about to the thirsty girls).

If this was the hockey world, if these were the women in Ben’s world, no wonder he hadn’t found someone to settle down with yet. His options were somebody who would date him for his money and because he was somewhat in the public eye, or somebody who would enter a relationship with him with true preconceived notions, knowing way too much about him. That was why he kept having fun with me. It made sense. He wasn’t going to meet anyone anyway, not during the season, not in the city of the team that he played for. At the very least he could get laid by someone who didn’t care about who he was, right?

I knew Ben on the ice by the #55 on the back of his jersey. Everything was just as he’d told me: he didn’t get to play very much and his shifts were very short. He didn’t have the puck very often. I noticed that he was a good skater, fast for his size, and his shoulder checks were hard. Parker and I promised not to mention Ben by name, or insinuate that we knew him and draw attention to ourselves. Actually, we were pretty quiet as we watched the game unfold. Parker would just nudge me and snicker when Ben took the ice, as if to tease me.

We rose to our feet with the crowd when the Oilers scored the first goal of the game, a simple tap-in. Goal scoring was a unifying thing. People were high-fiving people they didn’t know. The close-up of the player on the bench after the replay on the jumbotron was a familiar face. He’d been at Thanksgiving dinner, the guy everyone had just referred to as “Jonesy”. When we were back in our seats and play resumed, the goal announcement revealed his given name, Ryan Jones. It was nice to get his first name, especially since he was someone I’d met, but I didn’t really think I was ever going to encounter him again.

The goal was scored late in the first period with just under four minutes left before the intermission. Some people in the crowd were satisfied to go into the next period with a 1-0 lead. Parker and I stood as a couple in our row excused themselves, heading onto the concourse to get a jump on the concessions lines at intermission, just as there was a stoppage in play.

Parker’s eyes were fixed to the jumbotron as he asked me, “You have five dollars, right?”

“Do they even sell anything to eat here that’s less than five dollars?” I wondered skeptically.

“Probably not,” he chuckled. “I’m not hungry yet…I’m asking because I think we should enter the 50/50 draw during the first intermission. I have five dollars and I think it’s three tickets for ten dollars. If we combine our money and we win, imagine how much money we’d have for tour!”

A faceoff took place on the ice in the corner furthest from us, to the left of the Oilers goalie, Khabibulin. I glanced up at the jumbotron. The 50/50 pot was past $55,000 and climbing. It would probably be double that amount by the time the winning ticket was announced. Taking home half of $100,000? Parker was right. Entering the draw would be our intermission activity.

“I think we should too,” I agreed.

“Cool,” he replied. “So do you want to—”

Parker never finished his sentence as the crowd began whooping and yelling. The whistle had gone. Everything was quick. Both teams stopped playing for a fight. Two guys were latched onto each other a few feet from the home bench. The punches began and they turned in a circle. I caught a flash of the numbers on the dark home jersey and my eyes widened.

“Is that…” Like Parker’s words before mine, I wasn’t able to finish my sentence, trailing off instead.

“Holy _shit_ , Deels,” Parker used my name endearingly and he didn’t have to say any more for me to know.

No, my eyes did not deceive me. It was #55, Ben Eager, engaged in the fight. The bout was very short. Just a couple of rapid heartbeats and it was over. It ended with Ben losing his footing and landing on his butt, on the ice. I bit my lip as the players on both benches tapped their stick blades against the boards. I grabbed onto Parker’s arm beside me as Ben glided to the bench so he could head down the tunnel and to the dressing room. He looked the way I was used to seeing him, no helmet and no gloves, unabashed with a neutral expression on his face.

Parker and I both stared up at the jumbotron until the replay was over and the penalties were dictated by the public address announcer. The fight hadn’t gone terribly for Ben. Both guys got a few shots in. Ben’s opponent, Brad Staubitz, got the takedown after he shoved his right hand in Ben’s face and caught him with a left. That surprised Ben a little, I think, and was the reason why he lost his balance and allowed the other guy to get the takedown.

Ben didn’t win the fight but it wasn’t a clear cut loss either. When play resumed, the Oilers were on a penalty kill as Ben was given an extra two minutes for slashing on top of the five for fighting. Both guys had slashed at each other before the fight but Ben’s slash was the one seen by a referee. All the action got the crowd talking. I heard snippets of conversations around me, opinions about the fight and about Ben, varying on different degrees of positive and negative. Since the bout was in the last five minutes of the period, he was down the tunnel and to the dressing room long before there was any decision. He didn’t get to sit in the penalty box and watch the replay with the crowd. Instead, one of his teammates served the extra two for him.

When I sighed, Parker asked me one last question before the end of the period. “Are you okay?”

Remembering that I was clutched onto Parker’s arm—that was why he asked—I immediately released my grip. “I’m fine,” I responded quickly, though it was a lie.

I sunk into my seat. I wasn’t fine. As a general rule, I didn’t like seeing my friends get punched. And that was what Ben had become, my friend. I cared about his well-being. It didn’t matter that I’d learned before going to the game what kind of hockey player he was and what I knew he had to do for his team. That didn’t change the fact that actually being there to see it in person was scary. But I didn’t know what was worse: seeing Ben get hit in the face or caring about a person who would no longer be part of my life in a month.

 

\-----

 

After one in the morning, I was back in bed with Ben. I kept my hands to myself, watching as he attended to Roscoe. The kitten was flat on its back in between us and purring as Ben scratched at his belly. Roscoe looked so relaxed, whiskers sticking out sideways and eyes closed into slits, lying completely still. When I rubbed in between the pads of one of Roscoe’s paws with my thumb, he splayed out all four of his paws, claws retracted, to give me better access. The little guy really trusted Ben and me because we did nothing but cater to him. I’d heard that cats never liked to expose their stomachs unless they were in an environment where they felt completely safe.

After smiling to himself for a few moments, presumably about how cute Roscoe looked spread eagle, Ben looked over to me. “So how was the game for you?”

The Oilers had kept their 1-0 lead until the dying seconds of regulation. With the net empty, The Minnesota Wild found their tying goal. The Oilers ended up losing the shootout and the game, deflating all the energy in the arena. Parker and I didn’t win the 50/50 draw either. Instead, to cap off the damper night, we met up with Ben to eat and knock back a couple drinks after the game. Just because it couldn’t be a celebratory meal, didn’t mean we weren’t hungry, right?

Dinner was just another display of what I’d gotten used to. Parker and I talked a lot, and Ben was a good listener. He didn’t try to talk like he had the inside scoop on the game (which, compared to us, he did) or make it all about himself. He just politely ate his meal and interjected when we asked him to.

“The game was…” I trailed off, wanting to be honest but not harsh. “It was okay.”

Ben stopped petting Roscoe and chuckled. “Wow, that bad, eh?”

“It wasn’t bad. Just not my scene.” I went on, “I wish you would have won your fight. It looked like you were doing fine until that guy shoved you in the face.”

“I’m rusty,” Ben admitted. He had a few cuts on his hands to prove it. “Besides, it probably didn’t help that I broke one of my own rules last night.”

“Oh, and who’s idea was that?” I rolled my eyes and moved onto my side.

“Mine,” he took full responsibility with a shit-eating grin on his face. “Lesson learned, right? For my own sake, I promise not to give into temptation next time just because you look all sexy Minnie Mouse.”

Blushing at the ‘sexy’ part, I stopped massaging Roscoe’s paw. The kitten fussed for a few seconds, swatting at empty air and rolling his body from side to side. He meowed for us to give him attention again. When he remained untouched, Roscoe rolled over a few times, until he was curled up and pressed against my breast. Roscoe wasn’t the kind of cat who liked to explore the apartment at night; he liked to cuddle and sleep. Now he was ready for bed, regardless of whether or not I was.

“ _Next time?_ ” I stressed, going back to my conversation with Ben. “I don’t think it’s such a good idea for us to have sleepovers the nights before games. Remember what we said? No interfering with each other’s real lives.”

Of all the nights I’d spent in Ben’s bed, I could count the nights we hadn’t screwed each other on two fingers. Tonight would be the third. And it wasn’t because we didn’t want to, or one of us was too tired—it was only because dinner had finished so late, therefore Parker was in the living room, sleeping on an air mattress. The sex with Ben was so good. We always wanted to fuck when we saw each other. If I was going to be at his place, it would be hard not to break the rules what with the Oilers having so many home games until the end of the month. To deny Ben would be to deny myself.

“I disagree,” his voice was soft and his tone low. “I liked having you here last night. Not just the sex part. I really liked talking to you.”

A laugh escaped my throat as I began stroking over the silky black coat of Roscoe’s back.

Ben knitted his eyebrows. “What?”

He looked a little upset with me and I didn’t blame him. He had been so serious and had sounded sincere about what he said, and I just laughed in his face.

“Ben,” I shook my head, “you like talking to me? You barely ever say anything!”

“I say enough,” he countered.

That earned him another laugh. “Enough, sure. Half the time I wonder if I’m not annoying you by talking too much.”

“You never annoy me,” Ben said, touching my arm. “Obviously I’m not much of a talker. I like listening. The stuff you told me last night…I like knowing that.”

He was looking at me, looking at my eyes, but I couldn’t bring myself to look back. If I looked him in the eye I thought I might lose myself there. I’d already begun to let Ben in. It had started before last night, before I concluded that he was a romantic.

“I think you have a calming effect on me,” he went on as he scooted closer and enveloped me in his arm. It was how we always slept, even with Roscoe sandwiched between us. Sometimes I rolled over at night and Ben and I were spooning when I woke up. But we always cuddled and it kept him from snoring up a storm. “I like our routine, you know? I don’t look forward to the end of your time in Edmonton.”

Damn him and his romantic side. I didn’t like that he was so endearing even in acknowledgment that our time together was temporary. I didn’t like that I’d felt concerned about him during his fight or that I worried he would feel down after losing the game. And he was right, the talking part hadn’t been so bad.

I’d thought that it was a relief, being completely myself and being able to let my guard down around Ben without worrying about the long-term consequences. Now I wasn’t so sure. We’d gotten past just being fuck buddies. I had to watch myself. It wasn’t a relationship, but it wasn’t just about the sex anymore either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/55400592621/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	9. Baseline Road

For the last hour I’d been in the booth and for the last hour I’d struggled. Through the glass, I could see the expressions on the faces of my bandmates turning sour out of worry. They tried to hide their frustration with my frustration, but I knew we all felt the same way. This was the first big road ditch we’d hit in the studio and I hated that it was because of me.

Just the day before, I’d been in the same vocal booth and had finished my session for a song in less than an hour. I was always conscious about the musicianship required for any song I wrote for the band. We wanted to be able to perform every song we had. Did I have it in me to write songs that explored a more dynamic vocal range? Of course. But if I was all in on vocals, that would impede my ability to play bass at the same time. Rich and I both thought it was important to be able to sing live on par with how our recorded vocals were.

The demo for the song I was recording vocals for in the studio today had been pretty standard when we made it. We’d recorded a live run-through of us playing the song. Everyone in the band contributed instrumentally by the end of the song. But Grant heard something else when we played the demo for him. He quickly went through what we’d tracked and made his own mix. He stripped the song down to vocals, lead guitar, bass, and drums. He asked what we thought and of course we thought it was a better arrangement. Then he asked what we thought of me singing—really _singing_ —the hell out of the song.

I didn’t write a song that was vocally demanding and I hadn’t intended to record one either. Grant had a different idea. He wanted me to have a moment. Just by virtue of the instruments that we played and wrote with, Rich’s songs were usually piano-driven and mine were guitar-driven. Grant promised that this song would be best served by neither; it would be best driven by the vocals, with the instruments serving only as compliments. We all knew I had it in me, he’d said, and in fact I’d already proven it with one of our acoustic covers a few weeks earlier.

When I argued that it wouldn’t be practical to record a song in a way that we couldn’t replicate on stage, he immediately pointed out that I wouldn’t have to play bass when we played it, because there were five of us in the band and only three instruments in the song. Grant got my band to gang up on me. They reminded me that the whole point of Anthony joining the band two years ago was to make things easier on everyone. Having a second guitarist meant we sounded better and we didn’t have to compromise our visions as much because we could play better music with five people rather than four.

Grant pushed for us to push our boundaries. We could all play multiple instruments but the duty of singing fell on Rich’s shoulders and my shoulders. Trevor contributed to the back vocals sometimes but only in small bursts. I tried my damned hardest to fight Grant’s suggested alteration to the song. The Automatic Flowers had never been about how well we could sing. I didn’t think that the kids, our fans who listened to us, did so because of our vocal abilities. I didn’t think it was fair, either, that there would potentially be a song on the album that seemed like it was more about me than the band.

The album was arranged chronologically: through the breakup and into the better days. This song fell right in the middle of the album. I was willing to bet that Grant put it there on purpose, to convince my band to convince me to go all in with the vocal delivery. The song was one of the first I’d written right after Rich and I broke up. The lyrics were pretty raw because that was how my emotions had been. And that was what the middle of the album needed, a gut-wrenching blow to prevent any lulls. It needed my moment.

So I was outnumbered and my boys got their wishes. I was focused on my vocals for this song. Except my moment was so not happening in the booth. I got more wrong than I got right. Usually, for lead vocals, I did a first take where I sang through the entire song without interruption. Once that was laid down as a skeleton, we went back and focused on sections that I could improve upon. Today though, my first take was basically a wash and would be scrapped in its entirety. We moved on, tried it again, and I’d gotten through the first verse and chorus by the skin of my teeth. Grant kept cutting me off. It was problematic for me that my voice on the demo was far off from the way I was singing for the record because I didn’t have a reference. Just because I sang louder, it didn’t mean I was singing with more power or better. He insisted that I work through it.

The session was only going to get harder. I was almost done recording the second verse. The most vocally challenging part of the song followed: a chorus repeat, the bridge, and the second chorus repeat. At the rate of my hits and misses, it was going to take me four hours to sing a four-minute song.

Just as I thought I’d completed one good line, to finish off the verse, the music in my headphones stopped abruptly and was replaced by Grant’s speaking voice, which sounded slightly robotic through the talkback system. “You can do way better than that.”

“Okay,” I answered into the pop filter that protected the microphone in front of me, holding back my sigh. I couldn’t afford—literally—to stand around and argue with my producer.

The situation was that he told me to jump and I asked how high. Just because I was frustrated and scared, I didn’t doubt that the result was going to be better than I expected. That was what we were paying him for, after all.

“I know that you believe in what you’re singing because this came from you. But right now I don’t believe you.” Grant went on, “I need to believe you. I want to feel what you felt when you wrote about this lovesick pain.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“I’ll start it from the top of the last section,” he told me, leaning forward in his swivel chair.

That just meant he was making me do the last two lines over again. I scanned the lyrics sheet in front of me quickly, words that I already knew by heart because they’d come from _my_ heart, and then looked up through my side of the glass in the booth into the control room. I gave Grant a few more nods as I prepared to sing again. Trevor was sitting beside him in an identical chair at the soundboard where the sound engineer would have been sitting if we were recording the album anywhere but Grant’s newly built studio. Behind them, on the couch, were Rich, Parker, and Anthony.

No one was texting or staring up into space. They were all engaged, watching me. Having my bandmates and best friends all there to watch me was daunting and, I imagined, added to my struggles. I’d long accepted that anyone that listened to our new album was going to know exactly how Rich and I felt. Our album told a great story, going through the breakup, the pain, and the healing. I was excited for people to hear it. But in the studio, we were in the pain stage, and it was uncomfortable for me to sing about in front of my boys. It was different when they just sat there as opposed to when they were playing a song with me.

I was showing weakness and my most vulnerable side. I felt exposed. Getting over Rich and getting over a relationship that had failed for seemingly no reason was something I’d had to do on my own. I obviously didn’t have my best friend to help me through it, and I never would have burdened the rest of my bandmates with my pain. Neither Rich nor I brought the topic up for discussion until we had the band meeting where we came up with the wild idea that we should release the way we felt as music. But through the processes of songwriting, demoing, and recording, I kept my pain to myself. I had to. That’s what my song was about. I needed something that was just my own.

It’s easy to forget that pain isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It can make you stronger. It can help you stand alone.

I took a deep breath as Grant cued the music back so I could repeat the line I’d just done. I hoped I could use the nervous energy that seeing my bandmates gave me as power. And I hoped that power could be translated into the song. As the guitar track poured into my headphones, I closed my eyes, blocking everything else out when I began to sing.

My hands floated up and tapped at the empty air in time with every syllable I sang. Being in an isolation booth to record vocals was always awkward for me. I was used to singing and playing bass guitar at the same time. Even if there were times when I sang but didn’t play, I was used to it being there, something to hold onto. It was standard practice to track every part of a song separately in the studio, but boy did I feel weird singing without my bass. If this song panned out the way Grant expected it to, it would be the first song I performed without my bass strapped over my shoulder.

It was also standard practice to record the majority of the instruments before recording vocals. Since Grant’s vision of the song was driven by the vocals and not the guitar or the piano, he wanted me to sing first. I had only the lead guitar track in my headphones to keep me in time. Today was a world of different. The second verse ended and launched right into the first repeat of the chorus. I kept going, singing with a little bit more of a pronounced urgency than the initial chorus. Grant cut the track right on a pause for a breath, a good place for an adlib. I took a step back from the microphone as I opened my eyes.

“So, two things,” Grant held two fingers up for effect, “first, the end of the verse was really good. And your transition into the chorus, I liked that, too.”

“Not pitchy?” I wondered.

I thought it might have bordered on pitchy.

“No, great control,” he shook his head. “Now, second thing, be careful when you say ‘water’. It sounded a little too much like ‘wider’ on that last take.”

“Water, _water_ ,” I repeated the word in my singing voice, stressing the pronunciation.

Grant gave me a thumbs up. “Yup. Just like that. Go again?”

“Sure,” I agreed and mimicked his actions, giving a thumbs up of my own.

He went back to the drop of the chorus and my cue was the sentence where I sang the title of my song. My lazy pronunciation of ‘water’ was in the line right after. When I redid the lines and finished out the chorus, I made sure to enunciate, hopeful to not repeat it again. The most challenging part of the song was up next and it would be best approached if I felt positive going into it. I started to get really unsure of myself if Grant had me going over a section of the song more than a couple of times. The first verse had taken more than a half-hour to get through because of that.

But Grant didn’t stop me abruptly this time. I thought I was getting better. The song was coming together and just in time I was developing a knack for what focused vocals had to have, both in tone and emotion. The guitar track stopped playing in my headphones in the space for vocal pause between chorus and bridge. I was done my first chorus repeat. This time when I opened my eyes, Trevor and Grant were both on their feet. Larissa, Grant’s wife, was seated in Trevor’s chair, a hand poised on her very pregnant belly.

She was all smiles from ear to ear as she spoke to me through the talkback. “There’s somebody at the door for you, Delia.”

_What?_

“Uh…” I stammered. “I…”

“You know what? It’s fine,” Grant sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Your voice is getting a little too raspy for the big bridge anyway. Let’s take five.”

As I exited the booth and subsequently the barn, all I could think was that I was lucky we were in Sherwood Park. I was lucky Larissa was so pregnant that she waddled and that she had been home to bring me the news of the visitor. If we were in a studio in LA, if the love of Grant’s life wasn’t free to walk over because it was on the grounds of her home, I might have gotten reprimanded instead. I knew better. I was familiar with studio etiquette. You couldn’t just have people show up to see you. The only people that should be at the studio were those that were directly involved in recording on any given day. Recording time was meant to be sacred and uninterrupted by outside distractions.

In my defense, I hadn’t been expecting any visitors. I hurried from the barn toward the front of the house, cutting across the yellowing prairie lawn rather than taking the fabricated gravel pathway. Even though I hadn’t asked for or been granted any permission for visitors, I already knew who it was. I’d made a couple of friends in Edmonton—a few of the kids in the local scene had been to every single one of the small gigs we’d played since we’d been in town. But only one person knew how to get to Prairie Barn Studios to make the bold move of showing up unannounced.

Ben. He was standing awkwardly beside the driver’s side door of his automobile when I made it to the front of the house. It was game night for the Oilers and if he leaned against the Lincoln, he ran the risk of dirtying his perfectly pressed dress shirt—checkered and lilac in colour. As I approached, Ben’s posture improved and he removed his hands from his pockets.

He squinted against the late afternoon light for a moment. “Hi.”

“Hi, Ben.” I stepped out of the direct light cast by the setting sun and continued, “You can’t really be here right now…is everything okay?”

It felt sort of like the way I’d greeted him after he got his concussion. Except this time, I was busy and he shouldn’t be showing up to see me in the middle of the day. In his game day attire, he should have been on his way to the arena, which was in the complete opposite direction of Sherwood Park. I never saw Ben during the daytime once he dropped me off at the ranch in the morning after our nights together. I’d been sleeping with him long enough to know that hockey guys had routines they followed on game days like mid-afternoon naps and pre-game meals before showing up to the arena a few hours early.

“I…sorry,” he apologized. “I called you a couple times and I texted you.”

“Oh. I haven’t even looked at my phone since lunch,” I answered. “We’ve been in the studio for the last couple hours. I’ve been tracking vocals for the last two.”

“Shit. Actually I knew you would be. I’m sorry for interrupting,” Ben apologized once more and even hung his head. “I…wow…this feels stupid now.”

I frowned. “It must not be stupid if it brought you half an hour in the opposite direction of what you’re dressed for. What’s up?”

“I saw this before I went to nap earlier,” Ben reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, “it was sitting on the bathroom counter.”

Between his thumb and index finger he held my raven ring. My mother’s ring.

“I know I’m going to see you later but I…” he trailed off, voice going softer, “I remembered what you told me about it and I thought it would be better if you had it with you.”

He’d thought right. I was so used to the weight of my mother’s ring on my hand that my hand didn’t feel right without it. The only time I took it off was when I went to shower; I didn’t want the silver to ever tarnish because I couldn’t replace it. There were plenty of Salish carved rings in the world, but none like mine that held the story of my parents. I knew soon after Ben dropped me off earlier in the morning, when I got ready for the studio day ahead, that I forgot to put the ring back on after I stepped out of the shower at his place. I also knew that I’d be back at Ben’s apartment before the night was over and I would get it back, nothing to panic about.

I should have guessed that Ben would hit the panic button for me. He was a romantic, after all. He wanted to fall in love with someone (not necessarily me) just like my parents had. The significance of the ring wasn’t lost on him. My heart skipped a beat.

“That’s really sweet of you to come all the way here,” I said as he dropped the ring into my upturned palm. I quickly slipped it onto the ring finger of my right hand and touched Ben’s elbow. “I appreciate it.”

He shrugged and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s nothing.”

No, it wasn’t nothing. I’d been dumb to be so carefree about leaving it on the bathroom countertop. He’d been concerned. “Thank you,” I mumbled.

To make sure he knew that I meant it, I grabbed his shoulders for leverage, standing on my tip toes and giving him a full-on kiss on the mouth. Ben’s hands fastened onto the small of my back and he caught my bottom lip in between both of his own. We kissed a few times, innocently, tongues put away and eyes fluttering.

When we were finished, Ben ran his thumb down my jawline from my ear to my chin. He flashed a tiny smile, lips pursed. “Guess I’ll see you later, Mins.”

I probably had more jump in my step as I walked back to the barn once he’d driven off. The weight on my hand was a comfortable one. I barely even noticed the ways my bandmates were occupied when I went back into the vocal booth. My ring felt like good luck. Earlier I hadn’t considered its absence one of the reasons that I’d been struggling so much with my song, but now I felt more me. And seeing Ben when I wasn’t supposed to was refreshing. His visit felt like good luck, too.

“Why don’t we just run through the bridge one time first,” Grant said once he was situated back behind the soundboard. He held a can of root beer in one of his hands, Larissa was gone, and Rich had taken over the second swiveling chair. “We’ll build from there.”

In the booth’s silence, I took a large gulp of water and waited for him to cue up the music. I looked at my mother’s ring and thought about Ben. He was my friend and he’d been looking out for me. Grant played back the section of the song I finished before we’d taken a break. There was a very short vocal pause, just a few strums of the guitar, before the bridge launched. I imagined myself coming in and singing before he stopped the track.

“So you got your cue?” he asked, hitting the talkback control on the soundboard. I nodded and gave a thumbs up again, like I had earlier. “Alright, next playback we’re laying down vocals.”

“I’m ready,” I responded confidently, adjusting my headphones to my liking.

Grant’s eyes were focused on the main flat-panel monitor directly in front of him for a few moments, probably adjusting the frames of the two tracks he had in front of him. When he looked up, the music started playing from the chorus again. I closed my eyes and focused on the moment I’d just had, the word exchange and the kissing, even if it was the opposite of what I was about to sing. I relaxed and breathed deeply.

My voice broke into the song, big and perfectly pitched. I clenched my fists through the hardest parts with urgency and delivered what I wanted in the right timbre. There was room for one small breath before the end and I took it. My end approach was controlled. I made sure that I was singing through the emphasized single-syllable words and not yelling them. I knew I’d channeled the ‘power’ Grant wanted from me.

The smile on my face was identical to the one on Grant’s when I rounded off with an adlib. I let out a big sigh as the sound cut out of my headphones. I felt the way that I did when I sang on stage, but with so much concentration, I knew it was the best sounding verse I’d ever sung before. If I had it in me, then damn it, I was going to have to learn how to have it in me for this song every night that we played it when we went on tour. But I _did_ have it in me.

“Wow.” Grant leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t think we even have to do that over again.”

“That felt really good,” I proclaimed.

Grant had one more remark before we went on to finish the song off with some chorus repeats. “Now I think you should get visitors more often, Delia.”

 

\-----

 

My body was in recovery mode in the post-sex afterglow. Ben had an arm wrapped around me, holding me close. Both of us had been in high spirits when we met up earlier in the night. As a result, we shut the bedroom door behind us and went at it like rabbits.

I’d been having a rough day before Ben showed up at the studio. He turned it all around. I didn’t have to stay in the vocal booth for much longer after our little visit, it just clicked. When my vocals were done, it was time to track drums, which I was not involved in. I was done for the day and I was happy to just watch and listen until we were all done for the day in the studio. Despite the emotional intensity of the song, all of us in the band were pleased with the result. It was exciting to have something on our upcoming record that we’d never considered before.

A happy band meant a happy meal. We went to Boston Pizza for dinner, where they had the Oilers game on, and I got to watch how Ben’s night went. Parker pinched me under the table when a close-up shot of Ben was shown and I’d nearly dropped my iced tea into my lap. He only looked three-quarters as good on TV as he did in person. Personally, I thought he looked hottest when he was scruffy, on his back, and guiding me down his length. Hot or not, Ben got more than eight minutes of ice time and the Oilers beat the St. Louis Blues 4 to 2.

We’d both ended up having good days, and the satisfying sex to top off the night was the icing on the cake. Not five minutes into cuddling and Roscoe was already scratching at the door. Ben hadn’t even traced over a single one of my tattoos yet. He slid out of bed and slipped into his boxer briefs that had been discarded on the floor before walking to the door and turning the door handle to open it.

Roscoe bounded into the room and jumped right up onto the bed. What a spoiled kitten. Ben let him do whatever he wanted. The feline stopped in front of me, tail straight up in the air and curling over at the tip. He was a happy and confident cat. He meowed at me once and I scratched under his chin. With a face as cute as his, it was no wonder Roscoe got away with everything.

“When do you leave on your big road trip?” I asked Ben.

“Uh…” Ben disappeared momentarily into the tiny walk-in closet. I heard the switch of a light and a bit of shuffling. When he returned, he was holding a red shirt in one of his hands. He handed it to me before answering my question. “I leave on Wednesday morning.”

After playing so many games at home in the latter half of October, the Oilers were going on a road trip that was nearly two weeks long. Their next game was a few days away and tonight had been their last home game until they got back. When Ben got back, we would only see each other for about a week before he went on the road again and The Automatic Flowers returned home to prepare for our next tour.

Unfolded, the shirt Ben gave me to sleep in was, like most sleeping attire, faded. This one had a vector silhouette in the shape of Australia on it along with the words _I’d rather be down under!_ Like all of Ben’s clothes, the shirt was too big on me, but it was comfortable and soft from so many washings. What was important was that I was wearing a thick cotton shirt, in case Roscoe decided to get frisky in the middle of the night. It was always me he targeted, since he liked to cuddle up to me, and I’d already woken up with a scratch on my chest once before.

“Does that mean you have the next two days off?” I continued the conversation.

“We do have practice on Tuesday morning,” Ben responded as he crawled back into bed, “but yeah, they’re off days.”

“You should come to my birthday show on Tuesday night,” I suggested.

Roscoe settled in against me as Ben snaked his arm back around my waist. “You’re having a birthday show?”

“Well, it’s a show that’s on my birthday,” I clarified as I petted the cat’s back. “It’s our only real show in Edmonton. We’re playing a full set. The stage will have spotlights and everything. We’re the direct openers for our friends who are headlining.”

Our eighth week in Edmonton was the one we’d planned our whole schedule around, our off/allowance week, the one where we got to play a real show. Our friends in Barley Grow, a band from Tuscaloosa, knew that they were touring through Western Canada around the same time that we’d be in Edmonton. We set it up perfectly so that The Automatic Flowers could be billed as their ‘very special guests’, along with the two other opening bands they were touring with, on the night that they were in town. It just so happened that that was the day I turned 23. I was pumped. Playing shows was a huge part of the fun of being in a band.

Ben’s follow-up question came with a creased brow. “Your birthday is the day after Halloween? That must suck.”

I laughed. He was right. In general, on the day of my birthday, people were either sick from the candy or hung over from the costume parties. Everyone liked Halloween; they didn’t like the reality of the day after it. “It’s pretty crappy. But having a show to play this year makes it better.”

“Well now that I know it’s your big night—”

“Only if you don’t have other plans,” I interrupted, and added, “and if you want to.”

“I want to but, uh,” he moved his hand up my back, “is it okay if I bring some friends?”

“Of course you can bring other people to the show, Ben. Bring as many people as you want.” I quipped, “But can they pay for their own tickets? I was just going to put you on the guest list. I can only put one person down though.”

“Ooh,” he cooed. “Special treatment, eh?”

“Yup. I must think you’re pretty cute,” I retorted, not missing a beat.

“They’ll buy tickets. And you know what? I will, too,” Ben told me. “Actually, it’s kinda perfect. I’ll be hanging out with a couple of the younger guys on the team that night. Kinda like mentoring through team bonding, you know? We were probably just gonna end up watching an action movie. Your show will be better.”

“I don’t know,” I said skeptically. “They probably won’t hate it, at the very least.”

There were always some surprises, but I thought I knew the audience of The Automatic Flowers pretty well. They were a lot like the five of us in the band. They listened to a lot of the same music and owned the same records. Our music, and the music of the band we were opening for, we made for these kids. They were the musically disenfranchised youth and the bleeding hearts. Of course, all who showed up would be welcomed. We weren’t about discriminating against anybody’s music taste especially if they came to see us with open minds. I just wasn’t sure that a group of hockey players were bleeding hearts about music as we were.

“So what about after the show?” Ben asked. “Can I take you out for dinner?”

“You don’t have to,” was my instant reply.

Ben’s hand moved down my body again and settled on one of my thighs. “What if I want to?”

My resting heart rate had just slowed to normal and Ben’s words had it climbing up again. Since when did he want to take me out? I liked our arrangement just fine.

“Like…” I cleared my throat. “Like, on a date?”

“Yes, Delia, on a date.” Ben rolled his eyes and practically snorted. “I’m sure the idea isn’t an entirely foreign concept to you.”

“It worries me,” I admitted. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”

The last time he’d asked me to do something with him, to go to Thanksgiving dinner, he’d specified that it wasn’t a date and that I could even bring friends.

“Are you worried you’ll have an okay time?” he wondered. “That’s the whole point.”

I worried that Ben and I didn’t have to be naked and behind closed doors to have a good time together. I was worried that it would be a real date. Ben was so romantic that he’d probably give me butterflies if he could just figure out what got me going on a first date.

“Look, you said yourself that the day your birthday falls on the calendar is crappy. I know that I like feeling good about myself and being happy on my own birthday.” Ben asserted, “I don’t want you to have a crappy birthday. I think you should feel special.”

For a minute I was silent, considering his proposal. Did I really _want_ to feel special on my birthday? Wasn’t it enough that I would get to play a show with my band and was enjoying my time in Alberta?

“Where would we even go?” I asked. “It will be at least 10 o’clock before I can leave the venue. What’s even open after 9 PM on a weekday?”

Ben clicked his tongue. “Why don’t you let _me_ figure that out, Mins?”

“Alright,” I sighed, snuggled into him, and then went back to his earlier comment about how he thought I should feel on my birthday, “but not too special, okay?”

The last thing I needed was to find out that Ben was boyfriend material. I could see myself falling for him if I wasn’t careful. I wasn’t ready to be in a relationship or even be dating someone exclusively. If I fell for him, it would just create unnecessary trouble when I had to leave. One date was okay. Bed buddies was okay. I liked his body and I liked being his friend, but I didn’t want to fall for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/56843563275/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	10. 118 Avenue

On stage, I felt comfortable. I felt safe. That probably went against the natural vulnerability of being in a big room with a full standing room only crowd, but I felt it anyway. There were, of course, factors that contributed to my sense of security. No matter what, my band set the stage up the same way. Parker and his drum set were center stage and back, on a riser. He was the only one who didn’t get to move around the stage. Anthony and Trevor were the furthest to the left and right, respectively. Sometimes they lurked in the shadows and other times they were up near the edge of the stage. Two microphones were front and center where Rich and I stood.

Standing there surrounded by my best friends was why I felt safe. I could turn back to Parker to sync our rhythm. Rich was to my left and we could silently communicate by looking at each other through the course of a set. There was always potential for chaos at a show, like too many mistakes on our part or a fight in the audience during the middle of our set. There was also the risk of us falling flat and having a bad set. It had happened before. Every band went through it. But none of those things seemed scary to me when I had my band, united, playing together. I found comfort in them. We were strong together. Just seeing Rich, who I’d been writing music with since I was 16, out of the corner of my eye was reassurance enough.

Our opening song, unironically, was the first track on the last album we’d put out. It was a total collaboration between Rich and me. He’d come up with the lyrics but I’d come up with the riff and the harmonies. Rich was the lead vocalist on the song but we always thought of it as one of my songs because it was crafted in my way: two electric guitars over drums and bass. The song didn’t have any of Rich’s keyboard or percussion on it. At the time that we released our first album, Anthony had yet to join the band. Rich used to alternate between percussion and guitar when we were a 4-piece. But now, for simpler songs without his instruments, he got to use only his voice.

I loved the intro to our set because I loved Rich’s voice. He sounded like the frontmen of the bands I listened to but with his own unique tone. His voice was a little bit haunting. It rested right on that fine line between grating and smooth. After about a 30-second instrumental build, the song began by honing in on the two of us. Much of the first verse was his voice over my crunching bass and only little accents from the rest of the guys’ instruments. If we were one of the opening bands, it got people paying attention. If it was our own headlining show, kids in the crowd sang back every word, holding on to every note.

If we were lucky, on nights like tonight when we were opening for friends, we got a combination of people carefully listening and a section singing loud with pride. Those kids made me smile as the guitars and drums came back into the song in full force and Rich began the second verse. I had so much admiration and respect for our fans. I knew they were a lot like me. The Automatic Flowers put blood, sweat, and tears into our band, into our music, into our contribution to our scene. The contribution of our fans wasn’t any less just because they were in the crowd and we were on stage.

Being part of any alternative subculture required a lot of patience and work. Finding a niche in indie, punk, hardcore, metal, folk took a lot more effort than turning on the radio. It took time. Discovering bands, buying records, telling friends, attending shows—it was a commitment. I felt privileged to connect with kids through music to the point that my band was one of those bands for them.

We usually didn’t know that we were going to have a bad set or an off night until a few songs in but we could tell pretty quickly if we were going to have a good night. Just playing through the first song, I already felt like my birthday show performance was going to be great. I was comfortable in my birthday outfit, a black high-waisted tube skirt and teal button-down shirt with blue polka dots on the collar, and my black hair loosely braided off to the side. I stepped on one of my pedals with the toe of one of my black patent high heel shoes to turn the bass distortion off for the chorus and then stepped up to the microphone to sing harmonies with Rich. A few of the singers in the crowd raised their fists in the air, as if in solidarity with us. That was always one of my favorite moments.

As I strummed my bass and sung Rich’s words, I glanced over at him for a moment. He had his mic in his hand, up to his mouth, and was walking along the edge of the stage. Rich and I knew each other’s stage tendencies well. So he knew what got me stoked and that I would be even more stoked since our last real show had been back in August. He caught my gaze quickly and smiled back before I turned my eyes down to the fretboard of my bass.

Our show wasn’t just to celebrate my birthday. It was the culmination of my breakup with Rich creating something better than what we used to be. Rich and I weren’t going to be okay, we _were_ okay now. The band was playing two new songs for the very first time later in our set: one from him and one from me. Mine was another album opener, a nostalgic tune about who we’d been at the start, best friends who used to sit in basements and backyards.

I was nervous about it earlier when we played it at sound check. We were proud of our collection of new songs, but what if the kids didn’t appreciate the points of view we’d written from? What if that was when they tuned out and started texting on their phones? What if we screwed one of the new songs up because we weren’t used to it yet and that was the exact moment someone decided they didn’t like it?

But those nervous feelings and doubts never returned. On stage, with Rich to my left out of the corner of my eye, I felt as safe as ever.

I drew merch table duty with Parker when our set was over. We were still as DIY as we’d been when we started the band. We didn’t have a tour manager or a merch girl or guy on the road with us. Trevor took care of booking our shows and we all alternated standing behind our table selling The Automatic Flowers t-shirts and records.

Our fans were always as supportive as they could afford to be. Tonight (after Rich cleverly dedicated one of our mellower songs to me before we launched into it, because it had the word ‘birthday’ in it, in honour of my turning 23) that meant some greetings and a couple extra bucks in the tip jar. Being the birthday girl and the merch girl wasn’t so bad. Actually, it was perfect in the sense that it gave me a place to tell Ben to meet me. He showed up at the back of the short line with a couple of his teammates in tow, as promised. Barley Grow, the headlining band, were up next so most of the showgoers had picked their spots to stand when our friends started playing just as soon as they were set up.

Standing all together, Ben and his teammates looked like a misplaced boy band that got directions to the wrong show. Including Ben, there were four of them. Dark rinse jeans and similar heights. They ranged in build from solid and quite manly with grizzly five o’clock shadow to a teenage-looking guy who hadn’t yet fully grown into his body. One of them was typing on a cellphone with his thumbs. There were a few baseball caps and hands shoved into pockets of sweaters. Save for Ben, who was smirking at me, none of them were looking around or making eye contact with anyone but themselves, avoiding confrontation with overzealous hockey fans.

As soon as I stepped in front of the merch table, Ben had me wrapped in a hug. “Hi,” he said into my shoulder.

The hug took me by surprise. We were never affectionate in public. That would require more hanging out in public, which we never did.

“Hey,” I replied as I shrugged away from the hug that had lasted too long.

As Ben greeted Parker and shook hands with him, I looked over at Ben’s friends. One of them mumbled something to the group and they chuckled. They looked at me innocently, sheepishly, and I guessed that it had been a comment about me. Once Parker was standing beside me Ben got to the introductions.

“So, this is Delia and Parker, my west coast friends,” he stood in between the two groups and pointed at us, then pointed at the hockey players, “and these are my teammates.”

The guy that had prompted the laughter moments before clapped Ben on the shoulder and presented himself to Parker and me. He had dark brown hair, pale skin, and five o’clock shadow that paired well with with a cocky grin. “Hi, I’m Sam,” he shook my hand. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thanks for coming to the show,” I told him.

“You know, I was just telling these guys,” Sam used his thumb to point back at the two guys behind him, “it seemed weird to me that it was Ben’s suggestion to go see some live music tonight. And at this place that none of us have ever heard of. Kinda off colour for him. But seeing you here, I totally understand now.”

Ben shook his head, unamused, and I let out a slightly amused titter. “Thanks, I think.”

Sam seemed a little smug but nothing he said was untrue. Ben wasn’t an indie music aficionado. He only showed up because of me.

“Hey, I’m Ryan,” the next guy, the high school looking kid, introduced himself and shook my hand. “Happy Birthday?”

He was soft-spoken and lanky, and a little unsure of himself. His facial features were small and his build was smaller in comparison to his friends, even though he was much taller than me, and he actually stood taller than Sam and the other guy I had yet to be acquainted with. When Ryan realized that he’d been shaking my hand for too long, he immediately withdrew and shoved his hand into his back pocket, then looked at his feet.

I wanted to pinch his cheeks and tell him he was as adorable as Bambi. But a young NHL player wouldn’t want to hear that in the presence of a few of his boys, so instead I touched his arm lightly. “Thanks, Ryan. I appreciate that.”

The kid looked terrified. He glanced at his buddies who were engaged in conversation with Parker. I wasn’t sure who he was more afraid of, Ben or me. I bit back my laugh. It was cute the way he was blushing all the way up to his eyeballs.

“Um,” Ryan cleared his throat, “yeah. Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ, Ry.” The last guy, who had a bit of a curl to his short dark hair and sparkling eyes, poked Ryan in the ribs with his elbow. “You don’t have to prompt an awkward silence when you introduce yourself to a pretty girl. We talked about this.”

I chuckled. “And you are?”

“Hi, Delia. I’m Jordan Eberle,” he gave his full name and flashed a gap-toothed smile. “I really enjoyed your set. You guys have a really cool vibe.”

“Oh, thank you. That’s nice of you to say.” I replied. “I figured you guys sort of got dragged into this since Ben is your…mentor…or something for the night.”

“Or something,” Jordan confirmed with a laugh. “But Benny is a good guy. Great in the dressing room. He’s like a big teddy bear.”

Oh, he was the best teddy bear. I knew it because I cuddled with him most nights of the week. A 6’2” teddy bear that was solid but soft in all the right places, whose limbs fit around me nicely.

“Actually though, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen your band,” Jordan continued after shaking hands with Parker, making the group of musicians and hockey players one. “My girlfriend and I saw you at Edgefest when we were in Toronto this summer.”

“Oh really?” Parker was surprised.

Our band had been lucky enough to play one of the biggest summer festival shows in the country. The festival was actually sponsored by Toronto’s local rock radio station and the headlining band that day had, in the past, been on the original _Punk Goes Acoustic_ compilation album. Now granted, we’d played early in the day at Edgefest and on the side stage, but it had been a great opportunity nonetheless to reach an audience we wouldn’t have gotten to on our own. I could count the number of times I’d heard my band on the radio on two fingers and that wasn’t just because I rarely listened to the radio. It was more of a nice gesture of local support from a station in Vancouver because we were locals.

“Yeah, I was just texting her.” Jordan’s smile turned bashful before he spoke tentatively, “Can we take a picture? I want to show her.”

That did it. That set off his friends. Sam erupted into a short spiel about how pussy-whipped Jordan was and then Ryan took a turn elbowing him in the ribs.

“Of course we can take a picture,” I answered.

Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? Parker and I weren’t celebrities by any means. On the other hand, I remembered seeing a ton of #14 jerseys with the name Eberle on the back at the Oilers game. This guy was probably in the club’s future plans for success, a next-generation NHL superstar. One day I might be bragging about that time I met Jordan Eberle.

Parker, my hockey-inclined friend, seemed to agree. “We can take five pictures if you really want.”

“Alright.” Jordan pulled his phone out of his sweater pocket and turned on the flash feature in the camera application. He held it out to Ben. “You mind taking it, Eags? I don’t trust these other jokers.”

Sam snorted but Ryan stayed silent this time as Ben nodded and took the phone.

“Wait,” Parker reached for his own phone off the merch table. “I want one, too. For Twitter.”

Jordan stood in between Parker and me. We put on our smiles while Ben took two pictures on each phone, just to be sure. I was worried that so many flashes from the back of the room would prompt enough people to turn around and recognize that there were four NHL players at the show. But, as said earlier, the kids who loved our band and our friends’ bands were a lot like us. Music topped everything else. Even if they did recognize the Oilers, the next band was due to take the stage any minute. That was more important. No one came over.

 

\-----

 

Parker made me go. He told me that there was no reason to stay, that he had the merch table handled, and that I should get out on my birthday date. I got to listen to Barley Grow play only a few songs as I cleaned up my makeup in the room that my band had been provided with backstage as a holding area. With no way to shower away my stage sweat, I turned to a tour method of staying fresh and clean—no-rinse body wash wipes—before changing clothes.

From the venue, Ben drove straight to the underground parking garage of his condo. But that didn’t mean that the date was off. No, I begged him to tell me where we were going when we’d been in the car and he told me to just trust him. We got off the elevator in the lobby, at street level, and walked over to a Vietnamese restaurant that was open late a few blocks away.

It was the exception in Ben’s part of downtown. The other places were the big Sobey’s grocery store, coffee shops, and bars. It was after 11 but we weren’t alone. There was a young couple who spoke to each other in Vietnamese, a table of night construction workers, and a couple of giggly teenagers who were probably out past their Tuesday night curfew. Ben and I each ordered a bowl of pho and shared an appetizer of egg rolls.

Once he was calculating the tip and signing for the cheque, I took the chance to check my phone. I’d had it on silent since I left the venue. The notifications were in descending order with the most recent at the top. On top of the text and email notifications—I knew most would be birthday greetings—were two from Twitter. I laughed as I clicked open the mention, a photo tweet.

Ben slid the little pay tray to the edge of the table and looked at me curiously. “What?”

“Jordan Eberle is now following me on Twitter,” I shook my head, surprised at what I was saying. “He retweeted Parker’s picture of the three of us, too.”

Ben stood and slid his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans before putting his jacket on. “Oh, you crazy kids and your technology.”

Social media was one of the biggest reasons why my band had broken through. I only handled the band’s official social media accounts sometimes, but I was locked in to all of the services that I felt I should have. I tried to be good about answering questions from fans and showing snapshots of my life in a touring band. Ben, on the other hand, wasn’t into it. We were becoming real life friends but we’d never communicated on Facebook. I was sure without having to ask that he wasn’t on Twitter or Tumblr. The guy still had a Blackberry. He said his fingers made a mess of a touchscreen. According to him, until touchscreen smartphones got bigger standard screen sizes, he needed the physical QWERTY keyboard to be able to do anything.

“The kids are alright, eh?” I said to him as we walked out of the restaurant. “I thought they were pretty cool.”

Relative to meeting Cam and Kelsey, and Kelsey’s scary revelation about Ben being such a softie at heart, meeting the younger guys on his team had been light years better. No warnings. No unsolicited advice.

“Yeah, they’re okay guys.” Ben held the door open for me. “They make me feel like Father Time.”

“You’re not _that_ old.”

I zipped up the hoodie I was wearing as we began walking back towards the building Ben lived in. Playing full sets for live shows filled my body up with adrenaline and heat that I could still feel a few hours later. I was in a short sleeve black dress without tights but I wasn’t bothered by the chilly autumn air, and my feet weren’t bothered by the same four-inch patent leather pumps that I’d worn on stage earlier in the night.

Personally, I thought Ben was at a great age. At 27, he was a little less than five years older than me and in his prime. Maybe Ben was far from being the best hockey player, and maybe he wasn’t as far along on the path of his life plan as he wanted to be, but he was still well put together as a man. He was mature. He was handsome. He really knew his way around a woman’s body. His financial situation was more stable than anyone else I knew in their twenties. He was quiet and he was responsible.

“Ebs and Nuge are younger than you,” Ben informed me, referring to his teammates only by nickname.

“Which one is Nuge?” I knew ‘Ebs’ would be Jordan, since he’d so formally introduced himself to me by full name. I wasn’t sure about Sam or Ryan though.

“Um…” Ben blinked a few times. “Ryan.”

“You seem uncertain,” I laughed.

“I’m so used to calling everyone by their last name or nickname. I don’t think I even know the first names of everyone on the team,” Ben admitted. “Hockey players, you know? Dense.”

“Nice.” I went on and asked, “Well, how old is _Nuge_? 20? He looks really young.”

Ben shook his head. “Ebs is 20, I think. Nuge is 18.”

“Holy shit,” I swore. “No wonder. He’s just a baby!”

“Oh yeah. We never let him stop hearing about it,” Ben chuckled. “Some of the guys give it to him pretty good, asking if he’s ever even had a crush before, that kind of thing. I don’t think he’s ever had sex yet. Sort of sweet, right?”

“Sort of,” I agreed.

Sure, youth and innocence were sort of sweet. Ben was sweeter. His being a romantic guaranteed that. The birthday date we were on was really romantic. It wasn’t the try-hard type of romantic either—no candlelight or red roses, none of that pompous shit. He let me have the last egg roll. There had been silences during our meal, but none of them awkward.

“What are you thinking about?” Ben inquired, taking my hand as we got to the crosswalk right across from his apartment building.

Nothing about our date felt forced. I did have the butterflies in my stomach when Ben failed with his chopsticks and I tried to show him how to get a good grip on more than one noodle, which made us laugh after his many unsuccessful attempts. _That_ was sweet.

“You,” I answered honestly, then added with a wink, “naked.”

Ben looked across the street at the pedestrian lights then glanced up at the streetlight we were standing under at the corner of the sidewalk. We were standing in the same spot that we’d been the first night that we met. He smiled as he leaned down to kiss me, cupping my face with his free hand. The kiss was soft and languid.

“Mmmm,” I said when we pulled away, “you’re spicy.”

We’d both been pretty generous with the amount of Sriracha that we put in our bowls of pho. Ben was spicy from the hot sauce and minty from the leaves in the soup. He let out a low chuckle.

“Come on.” Ben tugged at my hand right when the light changed. “Let’s go upstairs.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/57908070340/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	11. Airport Road

Ben stood in the threshold between the bedroom and bathroom, leaning against the doorframe. He waited as I stood at the bathroom counter. We’d sat on the couch after dinner and enjoyed some Scotch before retiring to the bedroom. Ben was already stripped down to his underwear but I was still fully clothed in the simple wrap dress I’d worn since leaving the show venue. The two of us had taken turns brushing our teeth and now I was taking my makeup off with remover lotion wipes before we lost ourselves to the night.

“Thanks for my birthday dinner.” I smiled at Ben in the reflection of the mirror as I wiped over my forehead.

He padded the few steps until he was right behind me. His palms went to the countertop and I was locked in place against him. I kept cleaning my face until I felt his lips on the back of my neck right along my spine.

“I didn’t get you a present,” Ben spoke against my skin.

I finished what I was doing and pushed back against him. He let up and I tossed the wipe in the waste bin before I turned around. I pulled off the hair tie that kept my loosely braided hair together. When I shook out my hair it fell in messy waves, rather than luscious curls, against my shoulders. Ben’s hands on the counter and renewed pressure from his abs kept me in place. “I don’t need one,” I mumbled.

Our lips met as I craned my neck and my heels left the ground. The hot sauce taste was gone from both our mouths. Only minty fresh remained. I ran my fingers down his chest and he swept over my backside, stopping once his hands were just under the cheeks of my ass. Ben deepened our kissing at the same time that he lifted me onto the counter so I was sitting just on the edge. It was easier for us to make out when I was sitting on a raised surface, our faces almost level.

My dress rode up when Ben placed me on the counter and my underwear was exposed as my legs parted to give him room to stand right up against me. Ben’s hands steadied me as I leaned into him, cupping his face in my hands. I could feel the growing bulge in his boxers pressing under my belly while my tongue floated over the inside of his bottom lip. My hands moved to his back when he planted kisses along my jawline. I liked how wide Ben’s back was. I liked how much bigger his body was than mine, and in nice proportion. There was a lot of skin for me to explore.

With my grip on his shoulder blades, Ben took the opportunity to move his hands from my hips to the inside of the skirt of my dress, bringing my thighs together. He didn’t rub at me through the fabric or dip his fingers underneath it. Instead, he hooked his thumbs under the fabric at both of my hips and slid it down to my knees. He admired my black lace panties for only a moment before they were off my legs and discarded onto the tile floor.

Ben rubbed at his chin while he looked me in the eye and then examined my body. His hand came down from his face and went to the tie at my waist. When he pulled at one of the ends of the looped bow, it came undone, and so did the rest of the dress, falling limp on the front of my body and revealing a lacy bra that matched my panties.

“Oh,” Ben nodded with approval. “I like this dress.”

With a laugh, I withdrew my arms from the sleeves and let the dress fall. It pooled at my hips where I was still partly sitting on it. Ben supported me as I shimmied the fabric down until it could fall to the floor on its own. He brushed over the mounds of my lace-covered breasts and dragged his palms down my body slowly, prompting me to hold my breath as he went over my navel, my hips, and my thighs. When he got to my knees, he separated them again, spreading my legs to himself.

He did it with purpose. This time, instead of pressing his body up against mine, he drew circles against my clit. I sighed out and tipped my head back at the sensation.  
Ben moved his hand down and rubbed his fingers up and down the length of my already wet slit. I grabbed the edge of the counter on either side of me at the same time that my eyes fluttered to the pleasure. He worked me up until I was completely wet and then he slipped a finger inside me.

I hissed as my body responded to him. I gripped the counter so tight that my wrists felt like they would buckle. My legs pulled further apart to give Ben more room to work. He dropped a kiss on my tilted-back neck and pushed his finger deeper inside me with the next thrusts of his hand. He pressed his thumb to my clit, adding to my pleasure by rubbing at it at a slower pace than the strokes of his finger inside me. As my eyes closed, I whimpered out an ungraceful moan. Ben would have me screaming and coming on the bathroom counter if he kept this up.

He added a second finger but it was only to test me. The feeling of warmth broke out on every surface of my body. No doubt, I was enjoying Ben finger fucking me, my legs splayed open for him. I cried out happily at the added pressure against my walls and Ben removed his hand completely.

When I opened my eyes, he was standing in between my legs and locking my ankles around his back. “Come on,” he said, taking me by the waist and lifting me up. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”

I kissed him hard as he backed out of the bathroom, bearing our combined weight without struggle or complaint. Batting my tongue against his, I couldn’t be happier about the way he was built. Ben walked all the way to the side of the bed backwards. He adjusted his hands around me at the same time that he sat down, causing me to fall against him. I was able to get my legs out from behind him awkwardly just before his back went to the mattress, and I laughed against his chest.

Once our limbs were sorted, both of us completely on the bed, I was straddling Ben. With my knees pressed to the mattress on either side of him and his hands moving up my abdomen, I tucked all of my black hair forward over one of my shoulders and then unclasped my bra. The look in Ben’s eyes when I removed the lacy garment from my shoulders and chest and presented him with the full frontal view of my breasts was full of desire. His palms moved up and cupped them immediately, thumbs flicking at my nipples.

Leaning down into him, my hands went to his shoulders. Ben had a small amount of chest hair, light and thin at his pecks, and then there was no hair until his happy trail. I slid down his chest so that I was sitting on his thighs and tickled at his sides as I went. He wasn’t ticklish. He didn’t buck or even move. He just watched me, his hands going to rest on my lower back.

My fingers went into his boxers and closed around his shaft at the same time that I spoke, “Your turn now.”

He let me remove his underwear so that we were the same, both completely naked. I stayed down near the foot of the king sized bed once his erection had been freed and was staring me in the face. He was silent as I massaged his balls and swirled my tongue around his tip.

I could hear him breathing shallow as I started bobbing the head of his cock. He was trying to stay in control for when I took more of him into my mouth. I didn’t mind giving blowjobs as long as my hair wasn’t being pulled on as if to rip it out. Ben stroked at my hair slowly instead. I would never give head like a pornstar but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be good. It was my chance to deliver.

Just as I was about to take more of him, Ben removed a hand from my hair and steered my shoulder back.

“Delia, wait.” His voice sounded distant. Like he couldn’t believe what he was about to turn down. I really couldn’t believe it either.

There was no doubt in my mind that he was aroused. There was no doubt in my mind that he liked what I was doing, because I’d done the same thing and swallowed his satisfaction before. But he stopped me so I came up for air.

“There’s no way in hell this is what you wanna be doing on your birthday,” Ben told me, “and you know I’d be gone in five minutes.”

He had a point. Not about what I wanted, but about himself. He was just like every other guy I’d ever been intimate with: a surefire way to undo a man was with your mouth. Ben always came too soon that way, never lasting long, so I knew that I was good. I knew how much he enjoyed it. And he wasn’t exactly the energizer bunny once he was satisfied—he had _excellent_ stamina…until he was satisfied. Then he liked to cuddle and lay lazily until he fell asleep.

Ben sat up momentarily to pull me up so I was straddling his hips again. When my hands were on his chest, he grabbed me around the middle and smirked before he rolled us over. Then I was flat on my back looking up at him.

“Besides,” he went back to his earlier thoughts, “I wasn’t done with you yet.”

Before I could process or protest, his hands were sliding up the inside of my thighs, parting my legs. The sound that emitted from my throat must’ve been half a gurgle and half a moan as his tongue met my pussy.

I couldn’t think straight except to remember that people who lived in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Ben said he’d come in five minutes? The combination of his fingers and his tongue would have me match that. When he pushed my ankles up towards my body to give himself better access to dart his tongue in and out of my hot core, I ran my fingers through his short hair.

My sexual desire goaded him on, hips rolling and unintelligible vowels falling from my lips. Ben took me closer and closer to the edge. He licked at my sex carefully and then slid his fingers inside as his mouth moved up to my clit. My thighs pressed to his ears in response to him being everywhere. The pleasure was becoming too much to bear. Inside me, his fingers were probing, small amounts of pressure along my front wall to find the right spot.

When he found it, I lost control. His two fingers pressed on the same spot over and over again as my body gave in to the waves of my orgasm. They were waves at high tide, hitting me with so much force that I was taken under. I didn’t know which direction was which. For a while I only knew the oblivion that Ben sent me to, and I wanted to drown in it.

Once I recovered and opened my eyes, Ben was sitting in the middle of the bed beside me. We made eye contact and he reached over and touched me again, rubbing at my slick folds and then spreading my desire around the tip of his cock. He was getting ready for the next round and I was wet enough for the both of us.

His touch prompted me to sit up and get closer to him. He wrangled me into his lap and the motion caused my hair to fall against my breasts. I threw my hair back over my shoulder as I adjusted my legs and lined my hips up with his, getting comfortable. We were smack dab in the middle of the bed but in close quarters. Sitting that way, with him cradling the backs of my thighs, there was no height difference between us. His eyes looked paler in low light. Not so crystallized.

“Tired?” he whispered.

I shook my head. My eyes were heavy lidded in my post-orgasm bliss, but I would fight against it. I expected it to change once I was riding his dick. Fair was fair. I’d had a long day and Ben had just capped it off, finished me off so that I saw stars. He deserved the same from me.

That was his cue. He kissed me at the same time that he lowered me onto his cock. I could taste myself on his tongue and gasped at the contact of his girth sliding into me. No matter how spent I already was, this never stopped feeling good. He took control of our fucking, hands moving to my hips and guiding my body to take more of him with each thrust until he was up to the hilt.

Once he was thrusting up into me at a solid pace, his lips were at my ear. His breath was warm and tickled at my earlobe. I could hear the breaks in his breathing as he enjoyed the push and pull of our bodies against each other. I gripped his shoulders and sat upright so that I was slightly peering down at him. I did my part and rode him, rolling my hips as a counter to his thrusts.

His response was quick. He pulled back and looked at me with nothing but lust in his eyes. “Aughhh,” he sighed, “baby.”

Ben watched the bounce of my breasts for just a few moments before he moved his hands from my hips up to my waist, tipping me back in place and burying his face in my chest. Then _he_ was riding _me_. “Oh, Ben,” I gasped at the angle change of his strokes.

I felt a tiny tremor in my body and I was pretty sure I was going to have another orgasm, my second in a row, before we were done. We didn’t stay at a diagonal for long. Ben’s arms curled around my back and he picked me up for just a moment, his cock never slipping out of me, so that he could lay me down on the bed. My head was just on the edge of the pillow, hair fanned out on one side. I knew Ben was close because he ravished me, hard and fast, as soon as my heels dug into the mattress.

Moans escaped my throat again. I looked up at Ben as he plowed me and I admired his handsome features. There were tiny beads of sweat that had formed on his temple. He had a look of determination on his face, concentrated on making sure he sent us both over the edge. I wiped away the little sweat on him with the back of my wrist and flashed a tight lipped smile. My hips moved in a rhythm just barely out of sync with his so that we met in the middle and he could thrust deep.

He leaned down and kissed me hungrily once. When he pulled back, he moved a hand between our bodies. He fingered my clit in time to his thrusts. I was quickly writhing underneath him, muttering obscenities and clawing at his back. The pull and tightening of my walls around his cock took Ben to bliss when I arched my back.

He let go, collapsing against me, buried deep inside me and groaning. I only felt the first rush of his warmth spill inside me before I was taken by my own orgasm. I sobbed out a cry of ecstasy and several ragged breaths with my head thrown back. We held onto each other for support but were lost to our own vices for a while.

When we settled down, we lay side by side, limbs intertwined and ready for sleep to take us. There would be no Roscoe and no cotton shirt as I drifted off tonight. It was just Ben and me between his sheets. My chin was rested on his collar bone and hand planted against his chest.

“It doesn’t really seem fair,” I said sleepily.

“What doesn’t?”

Ben had no idea what I was talking about. He was probably already half asleep. He had a flight in the morning.

“You got me off twice,” I explained, “but you only got to once.”

He was silent, blinking at me, before breaking out into a laugh. He adjusted a pillow under my head and then rolled on his side toward me. It was how we would stay for the night.

“It’s fair, Mins,” he scooted closer and drew me into an embrace. “You’re the birthday girl, after all.”

 

\-----

 

When I woke in the morning, I wasn’t sure if the bed was shaking or if I was shaking. But I knew for sure something was shaking.

I didn’t open my eyes immediately, hopeful that my disorientation would subside if I just stayed still.

“Delia.” It was Ben’s voice, gentle and hushed in tone. “Delia.”

The next time there was shaking, I was sure that it was my shoulder. Ben waking me up. I covered my face and rubbed furiously at my eyes to get the sleep out. I’d gotten used to Ben’s early mornings. If he was up first, I usually wasn’t far behind. When I opened my eyes, I would squint against the morning light.

Today was different. I was running way later on his schedule than just a few extra minutes of sleep. He was sitting on the edge of the bed next to me. My image of him was blurry at first. As he came into focus I saw that he was dressed already—well dressed—in a pinstriped collared shirt and navy blue slacks to match. I could smell him. The clean soap smell of a man who’d just stepped out of the shower. Roscoe was there too, prodding at my arm with his front paws.

“Shit,” I instantly swore.

Ben didn’t have a practice or morning skate to get to. He had to go to the airport. His team was going on a road trip for nearly two weeks. It wasn’t a big deal that we’d stayed up too late the night before for my birthday festivities, but it was a big deal now that I was still in bed and he was ready to leave.

I liked being able to shower at his place before I went back to the farm the morning after. But now that wasn’t possible.

“Sorry, Ben,” I apologized as I moved onto my back. Roscoe curled into me, completely oblivious to the conversation. “I didn’t mean to oversleep. I know we’ve got to leave.”

“It’s okay,” he told me. “Actually I was thinking…you can stay if you want.”

“What?”

“Well, I won’t be here for two weeks. You can have your own space away from the studio,” he suggested. “Kelsey was going to pick up Roscoe later. But if you want to housesit, then he can just stay happy in his home.”

Ben’s words were sobering, and I hadn’t even been drunk. I’d never had a place to myself before—I moved straight from my dad’s house to an apartment on the mainland with my bandmates. I didn’t get much alone time. There were so many possibilities, so many indulgences to get into if I was downtown every night for the next two weeks. Was it really that easy? Could I just do that?

“Are you sure?” I wondered.

“I know exactly where to find you in Sherwood Park if you tear the place apart. But I know you wouldn’t do that.” Ben smiled and pulled the duvet over me, adding it to the sheet I was already wrapped in, but careful not to cover the kitten. “Barks is on his way to pick me up. You can even go back to sleep now.”

It was like he knew me too well. He’d already sorted everything out and the last thing he did was tell me. And he was right about me. How could I refuse his place? I was already looking forward to couch surfing, watching History Channel with Roscoe.

I abandoned all my plans to get up when Roscoe moved around on top of the sheets and rested on my stomach. I asked Ben, “Can I do my laundry here? Is it okay if Parker comes over one time?”

“Tell you what, Mins, I’ll leave the spare keys and the key for the Lincoln on the counter.” Ben’s cell phone started ringing. “Do your laundry. Bring Parker over. Throw a rager. Do whatever you want, the place is yours. Just don’t burn down the building, okay?”

“Okay,” I agreed to the terms quickly. “Thanks, Ben.”

“This is Cam,” Ben stood up and flashed me his cellphone in the air. He leaned down and kissed his cat just above the nose, which just about broke my heart, it was so adorable. “I’ve gotta go. Don’t forget to feed Roscoe.”

I nodded my head against the pillow. “I promise.”

“See ya, Mins.”

“Have fun on your trip,” I called out to him before he shut the bedroom door behind himself.

That was it. Two weeks in someone else’s apartment, on my own. I rolled over and snuggled Roscoe into my arms as we both went back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/59186040386/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	12. 102 Avenue

“Seriously?” Parker’s eyebrows were raised in disbelief.

“He’s a growing boy,” I sighed. “He needs to eat three or four times a day.”

It was a Sunday evening, the very last of The Automatic Flowers’ allowance off days. We had two more weeks of recording in the studio before our final wrap-up week. Parker and I were spending our last night off at Ben’s. We were going to do our laundry, make dinner, and watch a John Hughes movie. And then we were going to have a sleepover.

We’d barely just walked through the front door and I was already peeling back the lid on an easy-open can of cat food for Roscoe. It was the routine I’d gotten into for the last few days since Ben had been gone. I followed what I remembered seeing him do in the mornings and filled in the blanks for the rest of the day. I fed Roscoe wet kitten food in the morning and at night, when I was there to set it out for him. I let the timed dispensers ration his dry food and water in the middle of the day when he had the apartment to himself.

“Do you have to clean out his litter box, too?” Parker’s expression was sour at the thought and at the smell of Roscoe’s dinner hitting the air.

I chuckled as I dumped the protein-rich food into Roscoe’s dedicated wet food bowl. “Nope. Ben managed to get him trained on the self-cleaning litter box even though he’s still pretty young. Because Roscoe is a bad-ass.”

My sock-clad feet padded against the smooth floor of the apartment to Roscoe’s feeding spot, at the intersection of the kitchen and living room and just the right distance from the hall closet, where I set the bowl down. He would come out of whatever hiding place he was in when he was ready. It had only taken a few minutes in the past few days.

“Wow.” Parker went ahead and took a seat at the island counter. “Ben really loves this cat.”

“I never met a grown man with a kitten before Ben. They’re like best friends,” I told Parker while I washed my hands in the kitchen sink. “You should see what it’s like when they’re hanging out, playing together. This little guy gets so much exercise and so much cuddle time. It’s adorable.”

“Oh, stop. Imagining your handsome fuck buddy being all cute with a kitten makes me want to puke rainbows,” Parker said.

I took a seat on the barstool beside him. “Nice. So, do you want to get a load in the washer before we start dinner? The neighbours will probably appreciate it if we’re done with the dryer by 10.”

The closet that the washer and dryer were in had always been open whenever I was over, so that Roscoe could move freely to the scratching post and litter box as needed. I didn’t know if Ben closed that area off when he did laundry. I did know that the dryer had a hum to it. I’d heard the hum of the downstairs neighbour’s dryer before and it wasn’t exactly the most pleasant faint sound to hear for 40 minutes.

“Really, you’re worried about the neighbours?” Parker teased, “Like you and Ben don’t keep them up anyway.”

My friend had a point. Ben lived with a prime view of Edmonton’s downtown core—which in itself was pretty modest—but he didn’t live in luxury just because it was a high-rise building. The floors definitely weren’t made of marble and the walls weren’t even completely soundproof.

“Hey, we didn’t have sex that night that you stayed here,” I pointed out. “You have no idea how we treat the neighbours.”

Parker laughed. “I bet I have a good idea how you treat each other. You’ve probably had sex in every room of this apartment, haven’t you? Is there even a surface I can use to fold my clean laundry later and not assume that you guys did it there?”

I chewed my lip before giving an honest answer. “Guest bathroom. I’ve never even been in there.”

The guest bathroom—a half bath, as homebuilders called them—was directly opposite of the closet upon entry into the apartment. It was so discreet that I didn’t even know it existed through the entire month of October. I’d had my back pressed against its door a few times when Ben kissed me; I’d thought it was just another closet. We always used the master bath. I guess that was what happened when you spent the majority of your time in the bedroom.

My friend put his palms to his face and groaned at my revelation. I wasn’t ashamed about any of the fun I’d had with Ben. I could cop to anything to Parker and he would surely surrender first every time. He didn’t always like it when I dished back his teasing.

“Hey, there is a kitten that lives here. There’s a standard set in place for cleanliness. Look at this place,” I gestured around the apartment. “Ben knows how to tidy up. You’re not going to find bodily fluids in places they shouldn’t be.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of black fur. I turned my head to see that Roscoe was just short of the living room. He stood still on all fours, white paws a stark contrast to the chocolate colour of the floor. His head was cocked to the side, adorable as he looked at the humans in his home. I realized he might be a little unsure of Parker. They’d never formally met and Parker’s voice was new to Roscoe. Parker was closer to the dinner bowl than I was. The kitten just needed to know that Parker wouldn’t be a hindrance.

“Hey, buddy. Hi.” I sat on the floor where Roscoe was and spoke to him. “You must be hungry.”

I scratched at the white tuft of fur at his neck and his green eyes instantly became half-slits. I extended my reach, stroking his shiny black coat at his shoulders and then scratching behind his ears. He purred and sat down on his hind legs to enjoy it some more.

“Come on.” I laughed and picked him up, setting him in front of his food. “Dinner time. You’re going to grow up to be a big strong kitty.”

Roscoe looked from his food to Parker and back. He sniffed the food before he finally began to lick at it.

“Look at you feeding the cat and knowing your way around like you own the place,” Parker smiled briefly and shook his head. “Are you really going to be able to leave here unscathed?”

“I’ll be fine,” I answered confidently. “Ben will be gone again when we leave. I haven’t spoken to him since he’s _been_ gone. Not a big deal.”

We weren’t in a relationship. We didn’t have to call and check in with each other. Actually, given our lack of a relationship, it might be inappropriate to call each other while he was gone. Ben was on a 10-day road trip now, and he’d be out of town again when my band and I went back to Vancouver. There was limited time, once Ben got back from his current road trip, for us to hang out. Our arrangement would end and I was okay with that. That had always been the plan. That’s why it was called an arrangement and nothing more.

“Too bad. You and Ben would be a cute couple,” Parker suggested.

“What would we even talk about?” I practically snorted at the thought. “We have nothing in common and Ben hardly talks enough as it is.”

My arrangement with Ben worked, I thought, because we operated under the premise that it was temporary. I took in the most that I could with the time that I had. Ben and I shared things from our lives with each other, but we didn’t _know_ each other, not really. I didn’t feel close to him in the way that I would with a boyfriend. And that was of my own conscious doing. Whenever I felt like my feelings were getting in the way of my fun with Ben, I set them as far aside as I could.

“You know what the most important part of a relationship is, Delia?” Parker asked.

I nodded and said simply, “Trust.”

“Sex,” he corrected me. “And you said the sex is amazing.”

“Parker—”

“People are lying when they say that sex is secondary. You and Ben already have the sex part completely figured out.” Parker crossed his arms over his chest. “Everything else follows. The two of you could be good together if you wanted to be.”

Parker’s theory was a nice idea to buy into. Did I like Ben? Of course. It was more than just sex between us because we’d established a friendship. I liked passing the time with Ben. He was kind to me and he respected me. Having the time to think about him without being with him every night was making me see that I liked him a lot.

But having feelings for Ben didn’t change the fact that I was a 23-year-old musician who couldn’t wait to see more of the world. I didn’t have the same aspirations as Ben. Not yet anyway.

“I’m not the right girl for Ben,” I told my friend. “He wants to be in love and have kids and the whole deal. He’s never insinuated that he wants whatever we’re doing to lead to that. He knows that I’m leaving and we’re not going to see each other.”

“So you don’t want those things?” Parker wondered.

“I don’t know. Maybe. But I don’t want them _now_ ,” I explained. “Ben is ready for those things now. You know that I want to make records and go on tour freely, without reservations. If it means I have to be single to do it, I accept that. I’ve got plenty of time before I start to feel lonely.”

“No offense but…he’s a little dumb, right? Getting involved with you like this. Taking you out for your birthday. Letting you stay at his place. I don’t think those are things you do just to pass the time, just for sex. What if he thinks you are the right girl?” Parker was playing devil’s advocate. “What if he would wait for you to catch up, until you were ready?”

That thought hadn’t crossed my mind. Ben was a romantic but I could never imagine him waiting for me, so to speak. He wasn’t my type, even if I did like him. He didn’t play music. He wasn’t passionate about his favorite bands. He couldn’t care about the things I loved so dearly in my community because he wasn’t part of my community.

Ben was a great guy but we were too different. A one night stand that turned into an autumn fling wasn’t a good basis for a relationship. There was the fatal flaw of Parker’s theory. The sex was important but the relationship couldn’t be _primarily rooted_ in sex if it was really going to work. Surely Ben couldn’t be dumb enough to think that The One for him was a girl who didn’t even plan on continuing a friendship with him past November.

“I wouldn’t want him to wait,” I responded to Parker’s hypothetical questions. “I do care about him. I hope he has his happily ever after.”

“You should make sure he knows that,” Parker advised me. “He seems like a sweet guy. Don’t go breaking his heart.”

 

\-----

 

My biggest fear of Alberta had become a reality. The first snow had fallen in Edmonton overnight. It wasn’t very thick, just a light layer that dusted the city in white. I still hated it. The temperature had dropped overnight, which significantly altered my attire and my approach to the day. Gone out the window were my plans for one of my favourite polka dot dresses and a pair of tights. To stay warm, I wore a black crewneck sweater that advertised one of the hardcore bands I liked, along with some stonewash jeans that tucked into my Docs perfectly.

The truth was that I was an overreactive wuss, very un-Canadian, when it came it snow. I had an early Thursday morning, but the most I had to suffer through the cold was a few minutes’ dash from the lobby of Ben’s building to Bay/Enterprise Square LRT Station. Downtown Edmonton was largely connected by a “Pedway” system, a series of indoor, temperature-controlled overhead and underground passageways. Once inside Enterprise Square, I walked all the way to the City Centre Plaza without having to brave any of the elements.

I was up at approximately the same time that I woke up when I usually woke up next to Ben, but this time it was on the account of a band engagement. We’d been invited to the CBC studios in Edmonton to do an acoustic session that would be played on CBC Radio 3, the CBC’s satellite station that played an eclectic mix of up and coming indie artists. It was early and acoustic, and the day ahead at Prairie Barn Studios would be devoted to tracking guitars, so the guys wanted to sleep in. It was the first time in a long time that Rich and I were doing a band thing as just the two of us.

We’d made so much progress moving on and moving forward. I didn’t devote time to spend with Rich but I never avoided him. We were getting back to spending time together even without the rest of our bandmates around. The songs that we’d written only helped. We spoke to each other a lot in the studio. We blended our ideas and we laughed together the same way that we used to. The part of our relationship as a couple was done but _we_ weren’t done. We were bandmates, partners, co-writers, and most of all, friends.

We loved each other differently than we did when we were a couple, but we did love each other—it was just a different kind of love. That was our biggest realization through the album-making process. That was the subject of one of the songs I’d written and when I presented it to Rich I told him that I thought he should take the lead vocals on it. So it wasn’t my song because I’d written it or his because he sang on it. It was our song. And we’d decided it was the song we were naming the album after, _Loveless_.

The title was an intended misnomer. It was fitting because of the breakup songs that would be on the album. There were certainly songs that carried feelings of contempt. But Rich and I had taken our breakup and turned it into something positive for our band, and it was reflected in our work. The album wasn’t gloom and doom and feeling sorry for ourselves. “Loveless”, the song, could even be misinterpreted as a romantic in-love song when just presented by itself. The hook of the song was its theme and, maybe, an underlying theme of the whole album. It was simple: we knew each other better now, after everything that we went through, so how could we love each other less?

As the title track, the song would be the focal point of the album, and that was why it was the first song we were playing for our session at the CBC. There was an interview segment that followed the four songs that we would be playing, two old and two new, and both of us knew that we could expect to be asked about the subject matter that fueled our upcoming album. While Rich and I began to set up in the broadcast studio, I thought about how ironic it was that the first coverage of us talking formally about our breakup would be for a government-sponsored entity.

“What are you smiling about?” Rich asked me when he looked up from the cables he was untangling. My appreciation of irony must have shown on my face.

While I only had to walk over from Ben’s place, Rich had driven the van from the ranch with the limited gear that we needed for an acoustic performance with only the two of us. We loaded in two acoustic guitars, some microphones and stands, the keyboard, and the xylophone. The thing about acoustic performances, when done for mass broadcast, was that they weren’t really acoustic in the “no wires” sense. For the proper amplification, everything had to be either plugged in or mic’d up.

I worked on tuning the guitars while Rich got the mic for the xylophone set up.

“Nothing,” I shrugged. “Just taking in the fact that we’re at a regional CBC affiliate right now. Pretty surreal.”

It would be a lie for me to say that never in my wildest dreams did I think our band could make it. From the moment we started our band, I hoped and dreamed that we would make it in our own scene. I just had never thought about being on CBC Radio, even if it was the satellite station. I wanted The Automatic Flowers to succeed in the same way as my favourite bands: put out records, go on tour, and be respected in the same music community as them. Anything beyond that was icing on the cake.

“And lucky you,” Rich clicked his tongue, “all you had to do was walk here.”

I felt a pang of guilt in my chest. The day before, before I left the studio to feed Roscoe, I told Rich which of the acoustic guitars he should bring and that I would meet him the next morning because I was staying so close to CBC. I didn’t offer any more information than that and Rich didn’t ask for any. He was used to me spending nights away from the band by now.

“Sorry if I’ve been distant this last week,” I offered as I tightened a guitar string. “I’ve sort of been housesitting and getting into a lot of self-indulgence.”

“Your friend with the Lincoln?” Rich asked. “I noticed you picked up a new ride.”

Ben’s SUV drove a lot like my band’s tour van, just with leather interior and less passenger rows. I’d been driving it to and from the studio every day.

“Tomorrow will be my last day driving it,” I replied.

“It must be getting pretty serious.” Rich’s tone was suggestive. “He must really trust you. Lending you his car.”

_He. His._ This was the first time Rich and I were acknowledging to each other that my ‘friend’ I spent all my time with was a male.

“No, we’re not…we’re not together or anything,” I corrected Rich. “It isn’t serious.”

“Are you sure?” Rich raised an eyebrow at me. “I never see you past 9 pm, Delia.”

“We’re only hanging out until I leave,” I reiterated. “I’m sorry we haven’t had this conversation before now. I guess I don’t really know how to talk to you about…this stuff…not yet.”

No way in hell was I ready to tell Rich the finer details of who I was hooking up with. No way did I want to talk to my ex-boyfriend about how sexually satisfied I was because of Ben. I didn’t want to talk about how I had feelings for Ben and that I planned on flushing them out of my system by the end of autumn.

“I don’t want you to think that you have to hide the fact that you’re seeing someone new from me,” Rich said, looking me in the eye. “I can deal.”

“This thing with Ben—that’s his name—it isn’t serious. But you’re saying, if it was,” I wondered, “you’d be okay with it?”

Rich hit the mallet for the xylophone against his palm a few times before he responded. “Well, no. I wouldn’t be okay with it. Of course I want to be the one who meets the right person first. I want to be in a new relationship before you are,” he spoke honestly. “But I have no control over who we meet and when we realize that we want to be with them. Like I said, I’ll deal with it. I’d pretend that I was okay with everything until I really was. I do want you to be happy, Delia.”

I had no problem with Rich’s honesty. Actually, I appreciated it. We were so similar. I felt the same way as him. I did want him to find somebody, but not before me. And there was the biggest reason we never worked out as a couple. We were too much alike, right down to the conditions under which we wanted to see each other happy. I smirked at our similarity. We were bitter realists but not romantics. Ben was too different than me and Rich was too much like me. I was alone without a guy who was the middle ground, which I was fine with. But I wasn’t without Rich—I hadn’t lost him. We were still those kids that we had been years ago, sitting in the basement of his house, becoming better musicians and better friends.

“What are you smiling about now?” Rich set the mallet on top of the xylophone and crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re still my best friend, Rich,” I told him as I held out the guitar I’d just finished tuning in his direction. I was on to the next. “I hope I’m still yours.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/60900372236/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	13. Bellamy Hill Road

I woke with a start. It was unusual for me, because I usually slept sound. But there was an added figure and source of heat next to me. There was a hand that had just landed in the space right between my waist and hips. My eyes were slits when they opened. I didn’t see much. The room was still dark, and I could hear the warm air coming through the ducts, so I knew it was the middle of the night.

“Hey,” came Ben’s familiar voice. “It’s me.”

Well, that did make sense. It was his apartment. I’d been asleep in Ben’s bed with Roscoe snuggled up to me.

I didn’t bother opening my eyes any further or looking at him. I felt dizzy from waking up so suddenly. I croaked, “I thought you were coming home tomorrow.”

Ben and I hadn’t spoken since he left on his team’s road trip. We had no reason to. There was nothing we had to say to each other unless we were both in Edmonton. But he did have the outline of his team’s travel itinerary printed out and posted on his refrigerator. The Oilers had just played a game in Chicago and were supposed to be back the next day.

“Today _is_ tomorrow, babe,” he clarified. “We left right after the game.”

“Oh. What time is it?”

“Just after 4.” Ben explained, “We had a bad game. When that happens, especially at the end of the road trip, everyone just wants to get back to the comfort of home.”

“Sorry,” I told him as I curled my arm around his shoulder. I was careful not to wake Roscoe, who was asleep peacefully against my abdomen.

Ben smelled of the soap he’d used after the game some 5 hours ago back in Chicago. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” He enveloped me into a cuddle as best that he could with Roscoe between us, adjusting his hand on my waist. “It’s nice coming home to a couple of raven-haired cuties in my bed. You’re right where I left you.”

He was right. On the morning that he left, I’d been in bed next to Roscoe, just like I was now. I’d even been in the same state – half-awake and not up to the task of moving from where I lay.

“Oh, we’ve been here the _whole_ time you were gone,” I teased sarcastically, “just waiting for your return.”

Ben chuckled right in my ear, soft and low, sending a chill down my spine. His breath tickled at my eardrum. It prompted me to reach up from his shoulder to touch his face. My fingers slid right over smooth hair. I tilted my head back and finally opened my eyes completely. I didn’t think that I’d overshot and gotten the top of his head.

It was dark in the bedroom to the point that I couldn’t see any colours. But Ben was very close to me, because we were cuddling, and I could see the outline of his face perfectly—his big pointed nose, the blacks of his eyes, and those high-set cheekbones. I didn’t make a mistake. I hadn’t overshot. My fingers had grazed over his jawline. There was just an addition to his face, a beard in progress.

“ _Woah_ ,” I sounded out. “Can we please talk about what you have on your face?”

“The beard?” Ben sighed. “You hate it, don’t you?”

My eyes widened. “Are you kidding? It’s amazing. I want to stare at you and watch it grow.”

“Seriously?” Ben furrowed his eyebrows, doubting me.

“I can’t believe your beard looks this good right now,” I responded, recalling the scruffy stubble on his face on the last morning that I’d seen him. “You were gone less than two weeks.”

I thought back to the picture of him holding the Stanley Cup over his head. His beard and the hair on his head then were almost of the same thickness. I remembered thinking, when I’d seen that picture, how much I wanted to make out with him looking like that and to run my hands over his jawline. Ben’s current beard wasn’t as full as it had been in the picture, but it looked like it was maybe a third of the way there. It upped his sex appeal for sure.

“I can’t believe you dig it,” Ben shook his head but smiled. “Women usually want it off my face as soon as possible.”

Clean shaven or scruffy were the only ways I’d seen him before. He was always good looking no matter what his facial hair situation was. But with the beard? Forget it. I was keeping it together on the outside but on the inside I was a giggling teenager. Ben looked like the newest man on the mountain and I wanted him to light my fire.

The scene that I’d grown up in, that I was still a part of, had helped shape my opinions on the little things I was into. There was one indie distribution label with a slogan that had it pretty down pat: we liked our coffee black and our vinyl coloured. We didn’t cling on to anything to be “different”—we just liked what we liked without feeling like we needed justification for it. And just like any other community or subculture, we had shared interests. Music with dissonant sound. Tattoos. Vegan red velvet cupcakes. Full beards.

There was something so sexy about a man who could grow a proper beard, like it was a mark of his strength and character.

“Those women are crazy!” I proclaimed and stroked at his beard. “It makes me want to jump your bones even more.”

Ben chuckled again. “If I had known that this whole time...”

Really, then what? How much more time could I spend with Ben? How would his having a beard change anything about our consensual sexual non-relationship that had us sleeping with each other almost every time we were together? How could we be lesser friends so that I wasn’t as comfortable in his presence as I was now?

“Don’t get too attached to the beard,” he advised. “It will be gone before you are.”

“What?” I said, genuinely disappointed. “Why?”

“The team is participating in _Movember_. There was a draw to figure out exactly who’s growing the mustaches. It’s some of my teammates and some of the organization staff. My name didn’t come out of the hat,” he explained, “but I think it’s pretty shitty if I’m rocking the full beard while they have to maintain the Mos for a good cause. I should be considerate and shave.”

Considerate. That was what I’d always thought Ben was going back to the first night I ever spent with him. He was consistent, too. He was unchanged from who he’d always been. He was still quiet. Still romantic. I’d gotten to know him better but there were no new annoying facets to his personality to reveal. In fact, the longer I knew him, the more I was attracted to him—all of him.

“Too bad,” I replied tiredly to his explanation. I touched his face again, running my fingers along the smoothness that went all the way down his jawline and chin. My hand fell against his collarbone once I was done, my eyes getting droopy.

There was nothing I could do to get him to stay bearded and there shouldn’t be. I knew that Movember was about raising awareness for men’s health and raising money for cancer research. Supporting those in his organization who were supporting a great cause was way more important than impressing the girl he was sleeping with. Like I said, it wouldn’t change anything between us.

“You should go back to sleep,” he whispered with a kiss to my forehead.

 

\-----

 

During my housesitting stint at Ben’s, I’d found out just how convenient it was living downtown. The Sobey’s across the street from his building had a great selection of snacks and fresh fruit. The grocery store was the practical option but the best breakfast option, without a doubt, was the Sunterra Market inside the building known as Commerce Place. Their deli and produce was supplied only by local farmers. There was a drinks bar, a prepped meal counter, a salad bar, and most importantly, a patisserie. I’d gone there a few times and each time I regretted not stocking up for the entirety of the day.

I didn’t make the same mistake this time. Having come in so late the night before (technically morning), Ben had been fast asleep when I woke. The downtown Sunterra location wasn’t very big but I could still spend an unreasonable amount of time there deciding what to get. I thought Ben might still be asleep when I returned with breakfast. He was lying in bed on his back, typing away on his phone with his thumbs.

Engrossed in whatever he was doing, Ben didn’t seem to notice or didn’t seem to care that I was standing in the threshold of the bedroom doorway. I’d walked by Roscoe, who was grooming himself on the couch, on my way. I knocked twice on the open door to make my presence known and greeted, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Ben returned, looking up at me. “Nice timing. I was just about to call you. Wasn’t sure if you’d gone off to the studio for the rest of the day.”

It was later than when we usually woke up on the mornings that Ben drove me back to Sherwood Park but nothing drastic. Actually, Ben always drove me home too early when he dropped me off before his morning skates. I never went back to sleep but rather found something to do until it was time to hit the studio. The closer the time was to noon when I arrived in Sherwood Park, the better.

“I brought you breakfast.” I revealed a big paper bag from behind my back. “I thought that it could be a means of saying thanks for letting me stay here while you were gone.”

Ben shifted in bed and onto his side right at the edge of the mattress and set his Blackberry down on the nightstand. “What kind of breakfast?”

“I got some bagels, mini croissants, a yogurt parfait,” I listed off, “breakfast burrito, muffins, and a fruit cup.”

“How much breakfast do you think I need?” Ben asked, teasingly, and laughed.

“Well, these are all things that I like. Whatever you don’t eat, I’ll take to the studio for later.” I walked into the room.

Ben sat up in bed as I approached him. “I’ll go for the burrito.”

Setting the paper bag down on the nightstand, I unfolded the top and peered inside. Ben’s breakfast burrito would be on the very bottom. It was part of a complete healthy meal advertised to be made fresh that very morning, boxed with a small bowl of fruit and fresh-squeezed orange juice. I took out two smaller paper bags full of baked goods before I got to the flap of the box.

Ben wasted no time in peeling back the wax paper wrapping as soon as I handed it to him. I fished around in the bag for the single straw that I knew was in there and ripped the top off of its plastic wrapping so I could get the straw out cleanly in one swipe. I grabbed the plastic cup from the box and poked the straw through the crosshair opening and held it out to him. He was a few bites into his breakfast and swallowed all the food in his mouth politely before accepting.

He took a long sip before setting it down carefully on the now crowded nightstand. “Thank you.”

“Be careful,” I scolded him as he went back to his food. “I just changed these sheets yesterday.”

Rather than reminding me that it was his house and he could do whatever he wanted or shaking his head at my remark, he said, “Why are you standing all the way over there? It’s breakfast in bed, Mins. Come join me.”

_All the way over there_ was right beside the bed in front of the nightstand. But his point was taken. I unzipped my bomber jacket to reveal a simple black and white striped long sleeve shirt that paired well with the skinny-fit sweatpants I’d been wearing on my runs the last two days since the snow fell. I pulled the spare keys to the building and unit from my pocket and dropped them beside Ben’s cellphone. I wouldn’t need them anymore now that he was home. When I was rid of my jacket, I swiped a croissant from one of the smaller paper bags before sauntering around the foot of the bed to the other side so I could crawl in next to Ben.

I pulled back the duvet and he held out an arm for me, eating with the other. I didn’t know what he’d been wearing when he crawled into bed with me hours before, but I assumed it was the same, his boxers and an old t-shirt, the kind I slept in when Roscoe felt like cuddling. I curled up against Ben’s side, my head at the crook of his shoulder, and he ran his hand up and down my arm.

“You must be freezing,” he guessed. “I saw the snow along the riverbank when we were driving over the Low Level Bridge last night.”

He knew I wasn’t cut out for a Northern Alberta winter. It wasn’t even winter, just the first snowfall. And Edmonton wasn’t even as north as, say, Fort McMurray, but it put fear into me nonetheless. It hadn’t snowed again but the city was a mess from the aftermath of melting slush. The road crews had plowed the main roads as soon as it snowed but the community roads, sidewalks, and all the city’s landscaping was covered in one of two things: half-frozen powder or brown slush. It was slippery and cold in the morning, just two days after the first snow, and it was always windy downtown. I just wanted to be inside.

“I guess I should be thankful that it’s only happened once and I got to wear dresses through October,” I replied once I’d polished off my mini croissant. “If I’m lucky it won’t happen again until December when I’m gone, right? Is that too much wishful thinking?”

Instead of answering my question, Ben asked a question of his own. “How many days?”

Without needing any further clarification, I knew he was asking how many days there were until I left Edmonton with my band.

“Fifteen. Maybe sixteen,” I ballparked.

The Automatic Flowers were at the start of our final week recording in the studio. We were getting down to the wire. Every day went by quickly with Grant. It was increasingly stressful. We didn’t have a choice but to get everything done by the end of the week. Our band master plan was still on track but that didn’t make it any less stressful as our money ran out and our deadline came up. Our final week in town was reserved for mastering and mixing, when we would overanalyze the result of our labours of the last two months. Just more stress.

“And how many days for us?” Ben asked as he crumpled the wax paper and foil of his breakfast into a ball. He was finished eating and exchanged the trash for the orange juice.

That question was more specific. The answer was more specific, too. I’d looked at the team travel itinerary on his refrigerator every day that I was alone in the apartment. I knew the overlap. I knew the possible days that I would be leaving. I knew the day that he was leaving on another road trip, before I was leaving. After that day, we wouldn’t see each other anymore.

“Seven.”

He offered the orange juice to me silently and I lifted my head from his shoulder to drink from the straw. I rested my head against the pillow instead when I was done and Ben set the drink back on the nightstand. He turned on his side so we were face to face in bed, foreheads aligned, sharing the same pillow.

“Exactly a week from today,” Ben said simply, looking me in the eye.

At the same time that I nodded, I felt the muscles in my arms clench. It was hard to look into Ben’s eyes of blue in the morning light and not want to touch him. And he still had the damn beard. I hadn’t been kidding when I told him that it made me want to jump his bones even more.

Ben wrapped his arm around my shoulder and then spoke, “I was thinking about you a lot while I was gone.”

I was trapped. The hand on my skin indicated that it wasn’t a conversation he was going to let me roll away from. I wasn’t meant to look anywhere but his face or change the subject.

So I gave him the sexiest smile that I could. “I thought about you, too.”

How could I go about my day and then go home to Ben’s apartment, play with his cat, and sleep in his bed without thinking about him? He was like the “one night at camp” stories you told your girlfriends about. Except it was night after night and I didn’t have girlfriends, I had Parker.

“I like you, Delia,” Ben told me boldly, without hesitation. “I like your black hair and your green eyes and your little nose. I like your hips. I like your curves.”

The things about me that he mentioned were things he’d told me before, usually before sex. But he wasn’t done yet. He went on, “But most of all I like you. Your independence and your boldness. The sexiest part of you is that you’re a firecracker. I know that you would never let a man tell you what to do.”

My heartbeat picked up. Those were what I considered real compliments. I liked a man who liked my thinking mind. Without giving myself a chance to overthink it, I let him know. “Ben, I like you, too.”

“Really?” he wondered, searching my face. “Do you?”

I nodded, not breaking eye contact. I wasn’t going to give him reasons like he’d given me. But I’d always been attracted to Ben and while he’d been gone, while I’d had time alone to think, I realized how much I liked him. He had more to offer than what I was looking for. He was like a prototype of what I would want in the future.

And I knew what he was doing. Ben was gauging to see what the status of our fling was. That was exactly why I admitted to him that I liked him. Like Parker had told me, I owed it to Ben to be clear that our hot sex and our friendship were finite. I liked him and I liked what we had but that was the end of the story. Like I had told Parker, I was pretty sure Ben already knew. That was why he had made it easy, telling me that I was a firecracker and he liked my independence.

“I can’t be _her_ for you,” I told him honesty. “The relationship that you are looking for and that you deserve are nothing that I’m ready for.”

“Can you be her for seven days?” Ben’s voice was barely above a whisper. He stroked my face. “Whatever it is that we have…I want it to be real until we’re done. I just don’t know when I’m gonna meet another you.”

That was heavy. _Real._ If we became real, it was way, way past what we currently were. We could get affectionate all we wanted, without worrying about whether we were giving off the wrong impression. We wouldn’t be taking risks when we crossed the line with each other because there wouldn’t be a line. Our non-relationship would become a relationship.

I realized it would be something else, too. It would be closure. I didn’t want to end on a sour note with Ben. I didn’t want to leave any doubt that our time together hadn’t served its purpose. And the thought that I could have Ben for real, for a fixed term, well that was too good to pass up.

My fingers ran through Ben’s hair and I leaned in to kiss him like I meant it, because now I _did_ mean it. “Yes,” I finally agreed to his proposition.

Ben grinned and kissed me again, thoroughly, before reaching back over to the nightstand to grab something.

“Here,” he pressed the spare keys into my hand. “You still need these.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/61395161765/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	14. Gateway Boulevard

My fingers moved in patterns. A pattern of notes on the fretboard and a picking pattern along the strings at the hollow opening of my acoustic guitar. I was sitting at the foot of the bed in Ben’s room, practicing the song that would be the very last acoustic cover I’d be playing with Rich for the little video series we were doing. It was a hectic final week recording at Prairie Barn Studios. My band and I wanted to milk our money’s worth for our time with Grant. It was go, go, go in the studio and our most stressful week in Edmonton.

We were completely focused on our upcoming album during our recording hours as we got down to the wire. I hadn’t rehearsed the final cover song with Rich or even at all, really, so I took the opportunity when I got it, knowing that I’d have an empty apartment to myself while I waited for Ben to get home. I’d made the trip over from the band’s final gig in Edmonton, an early evening in-store performance at one of the local record stores in Old Strathcona. When I arrived, I changed, turned the lamp on, and got right to work. The keys Ben told me to keep had come in handy after all.

I didn’t have to make many adjustments to the borrowed song. It was mid-tempo and short. I would have the lead vocal role, but there was a cool call and response part in the chorus—a vocal technique Rich and I had become very fond of—for us to sing together. Best of all, Rich would get to play the piano and I would get to play the acoustic guitar. Those were the instruments we each preferred to play for acoustic songs but it was rare to find songs that were exactly that, even songs that we ourselves had written, because acoustic songs weren’t guaranteed to sound pleasant when played the exact same way as they were electric. We usually used a combination of two acoustic guitars or just the piano or just one guitar and some minimal percussion. The song we’d chosen was perfect for the grand finale of our cover series.

By the time I heard the lock turn in the front door, I knew what to do and would pick up practice again with Rich at the next opportune time. I’d moved on to a song that was completely unrelated, but had inspired me back in the writing phase of the album, back in Vancouver. The story of bandmates who dated and broke up was far from unique to my band. I was strumming and singing the end of a song by Fleetwood Mac (maybe the best example that writing about love lost between band members was invaluable) when Ben entered the room.

He sat down to my right, away from the fretboard of my guitar, holding Roscoe in his arms. The beard that had adorned his face so perfectly the day before was gone. He waited until I was done playing before he spoke to me. “Hey, baby.”

“Hey.”

Before, I would have felt uncomfortable if Ben had called me ‘baby’ outside of time engaged in sex. And I definitely didn’t call him that. But we were on the second day of our seven days of real. It wasn’t awkward and it sounded natural rolling off his tongue.

“That reminds me of riding in my mom’s minivan when she would drive me and my brother to hockey practice when we were kids,” Ben told me, referring to the old song I’d just played. “She used to listen to a station that played all the oldies hits. Actually, she probably still does.”

The corners of my mouth turned up into a smile. I knew exactly what he was talking about. The song I’d just played, “Dreams” had been a huge hit for Fleetwood Mac at the end of the 70s—their only #1 on the charts. It was one of the songs on heavy rotation on those Yesterday’s Hits radio stations and rightfully so, because it was timeless. As an acoustic song, it wasn’t difficult to play, just strummed chords. The reason Rich and I hadn’t chosen to do it as a cover for our acoustic series was because it was so driven by the drum beat and the bass line. Without them, the sound and the words felt a little hollow.

All the Fleetwood Mac I listened to in the wake of my failed relationship wasn’t a wash, though. The song right after “Dreams” on their album _Rumours_ was driven by one of Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar picking patterns. The instrumental concept of one of the songs I’d written for _Loveless_ featured a 5-string bass and, more significantly, the guitar was based on a small part of the picking pattern from the verse of Buckingham’s song, “Never Going Back Again”.

As I set my guitar and pick down on the bed, I asked Ben, “How’s Cam?”

“Injured,” he shrugged. “Annoyed. He’s out for at least two months.”

The reason that I arrived downtown before Ben was because he’d gone over to Cam and Kelsey’s for dinner. He wanted to check on Cam, his closest friend on the team and road roommate. Cam had just gotten back from a shoulder injury while on their road trip. He got to play in all of one and a half games before hurting his ankle. I found out that he’d flown home a day early and Ben had their hotel room all to himself for the last night of the trip. So that was why he’d had all that time to think about me.

“That’s such a bummer.” I stood and went to put the guitar in its case that was on the ground.

Once the snaps were sealed shut to keep out the dust, I picked up the guitar in case and leaned it against the wall, out of the way. When I turned back to Ben, he was staring at me and the words out of his mouth had nothing to with his friend. “Nice shirt.”

The flannel shirt I was wearing belonged to him. It was huge on me. It went almost to my knees and I’d had to fold the sleeves over a few times as to not impede with my guitar playing.

“It was cold enough for me to see my breath in here earlier,” I said, reasoning why I’d gone with a camping look. “I needed a way to stay warm without hiding under the covers in bed or wearing my jacket indoors.”

Ben chuckled with a sly grin on his face. “You say that but I can’t help wondering if you’re wearing anything else underneath it.”

His sightline was zeroed in on my chest. I smirked. My nipples weren’t hard and protruding an outline against the shirt. But he was on to me.

I put my hands on his shoulders and pressed my lips to his earlobe before I whispered, “How badly do you want to find out?”

Rather than answer me when I reclaimed my spot beside him, he stood and took Roscoe out to the living room. I heard Ben talking to the kitten, who had grown almost the size of an adult housecat, telling his furry friend that they would hang out again the next day. When he returned to the room, he shut the door behind him and walked up to me with darkened bedroom eyes.

He knelt in front of me and ran his hands up my thighs, pulling my legs apart. My unclothed lady bits were exposed to him and to the cool air of the bedroom. What I had on, or rather, didn’t have on, was better than skimpy lingerie. Under the flannel shirt was nothing but my bare skin.

Ben looked up from my lap with a triumphant smile. “I knew it.”

I melted into a fit of giggles and fell back against the bed as he practically tackled me. He moved us both up the bed so that we were in the center of it. He kissed me softly at first and then deeply, his tongue teasing my tongue, as he began unbuttoning my borrowed shirt.

We hadn’t slept together since the night of my birthday but he didn’t rush anything. I followed his lead as he took the foreplay slowly. There was a lot of kissing. Touching. Licking. Now that we were real, at least for the time being, we explored each other like never before. I was nearly in a trance when it came time for him to push inside me. My entire body was buzzing for him to take me. My folds were wet with my desire.

We ended up with me on top, straddling him. His erection was pointed right at the ‘v’ of my pelvis until I was in a position that was comfortable for me, legs parallel on either side of him and weight centered on his hands that were cupping my ass. I moved forward and guided him to my opening, until his cock was right under my entrance.

His hands moved up to the small of my back as his tip slipped past my folds and I rolled my hips down to take him deeper. I sighed and then bit my lip as my body took in his length. I leaned forward, placed my hands gently on his chest, and rocked my body against his, hoping to speed up our movements. Ben cupped my breasts and flicked my nipples with his thumbs a few times. He pulled me down over him and licked at my right nipple with his tongue, causing me to moan, the new position driving him deeper inside me.

Ben stilled my hips with his hands once he released my breast from his mouth. He stared up at me with those breathtaking blue eyes and took control. He took care of the push and pull of my hips. He pushed me upward until just the head of his cock was surrounded by my hot core and then pulled me all the way down over the base as far as I could take him. He did it over and over again, slowly, ensuring that we both enjoyed the feeling of his girth sliding against my walls.

I could only imagine that the pleasure was written all over my face and he could read me. “Baby,” he whispered while I looked into his eyes, “you feel like silk.”

My hair covered both of our faces like a curtain when I leaned down and fused my lips with his. It was reactionary and necessary. Kissing kept me from moaning and cursing, at least temporarily. Ben was always a good lay but he was a little something extra this time, too, and my body was fully responsive.

He let go of my hips to smooth down my hair, giving me leverage. My intention was to slide back and forth on his dick but in my fury I forgot how far out he was going each time and he slipped out of me. Ben growled against my lips when his tip rubbed against my opening and missed. When I opened my eyes, before I could move to make an adjustment, Ben had me locked in an embrace.

The details of his face were blurry so up close. I could still see the blue gradient of his eyes and the creases in his lips. He leaned his head back further into the mattress so that he had enough room to touch the tip of his nose to mine. I smiled, knowing that he did it because he liked my nose, and recalling the night that we first met. Immediately, he moved his head from side to side and our noses rubbed just a little bit, Eskimo kisses, making me laugh. It was crazy how he could make me feel sexy and then adorable in consecutive moments.

He’d encircled me in his arms to flip us over, so that I was under him. Except once I was on my back he rolled right off me. And he went on my side of the bed. When I gave him a questioning look, he took me up in his arms so that we were spooning. He kissed the sensitive spot behind my ear.

I felt his erection pressed against my backside. Ben ran his large palms down the length of my chest and stopped just below my belly button. It was as hot as it was sensual and I wouldn’t mind him doing it again. He moved a hand down and pressed his thumb to my clit. I drew in a sharp breath and squirmed against the delicious pressure.

His other hand combed over my entire side that was closest to him, from shoulder to waist to hip to thigh. When he got to the back of my knee, he pulled my leg so that it was bent resting on top of his, effectively spreading my legs. He let go of my hot button and felt for my entrance, making me purr.

Ben was a good multitasker in bed. He buried his face in my neck at the same time that he shifted so that his cock was poised in the perfect spot. Then there was the hand between my legs, setting my skin on fire just by running a finger in a straight line up and down along my pussy.

“Please, Ben,” my voice was desperate.

He nudged his length inside me slowly and the whole world changed. Ben was all over me in the best way. I felt him everywhere. He stroked into me slowly and stroked all over my skin with his palm. I twisted my neck in place awkwardly so I could look back at him and there he was ready to engage me in a kiss. He moved his hand up and held my chin, supporting my head as we locked lips slowly, until I drew back for air. His forehead was pressed to mine and he stared at me with smoldering eyes.

I moved my head back into comfortable position, rested against the pillow and facing forward away from Ben. He held me tight against his body and I clutched at his forearm, trying to get closer still. The way he was taking me, sideways and from behind, gave me heightened sensation in places I didn’t even know I had senses. I wanted him to speed up our pace and give me release but at the same time I wanted to continue in our current state forever because the feeling in my stomach was euphoria and I didn’t want it to stop.

In two months, Ben and I had had a lot of sex. Couch sex, shower sex, countertop sex, morning sex. But this time was different. Every movement was gentle and careful yet completely intense. We always slept with each other out of desire. This felt purer. This felt like _need_. A new feeling arose in the pit of my stomach that I’d never felt before, but I immediately knew what it was. With Ben wrapped around me and inside me, it was there. Wholeness.

For a while the whole world faded away and nothing else mattered except for that feeling. I’d never felt more beautiful, more wanted, more satisfied, more joy in my entire life. It was mind-blowing.

I opened my eyes to reality and sighed in surrender to the sexual pleasure being granted to me. I was thankful when Ben bent my knee up towards my chest and hissed under his breath. It meant that he was close, like I was, and if I fell apart in his arms soon it wouldn’t take long for him to follow. The base of his cock brushed up against my clit with each thrust. I whimpered with delight.

“Oh, Mins,” he grunted the nickname he had created for me.

Ben stayed steady. He stroked into me at the same pace and I went through the full climb of my climax. He just let it happen naturally, without speeding up or slowing down. He hit my sweet spot and my clit almost simultaneously with his angle. He waited and I lost control, like a teapot whistling when the steam came out the spout. I came around his cock, murmuring his name and gasping, clutching at his arm that held my body. My orgasm coursed through me so hard I was shaking.

He responded to the squeeze of my inner walls tightening around him. He stopped pumping and gripped at my skin with his fingertips as he nestled himself inside me. Ben drew in a sharp breath and then released into my body. His stream flowed in time with his breaths, which tickled hot against my ear. The weight of his body against mine was heavier when he was finished. We stayed like that, linked and spooning, for a long time.

When he was ready, Ben pulled out of me, kissing behind my ear and running his hand up and down the side of my body again. At first I took pleasure in it and snuggled back towards him. But I scooted away just far enough that I could roll over to face him, so I could hold him in my arms. Our gazes met and without any words we smiled at each other. We looked at each other dreamily and we closed our eyes.

That was when an old feeling took over in the pit of my stomach. Instead of losing myself to sleep, I thought I was going to start sobbing. I was feverish and bit my lip to keep from dry heaving. I kept my eyes closed and didn’t move until I was sure Ben was asleep.

When his arm went dead weight around my waist and his breathing became consistently heavy, I watched him in his sleep. The lamp on his nightstand was still on; we’d been a little too busy to think about the lighting in the room after sex. Every minute that I looked at him I felt a little worse. Ben was so beautiful. He slept peacefully, even snored a little. He had no idea I was panicking.

I thought back to what Parker said about sex being the most important part of a relationship. Maybe what Parker had really meant to tell me was that the depth of the sex was an indicator of something rare and special between two people. I was up for hours, while Ben slept beside me, reevaluating the validity of what one of my best friends had tried to tell me. It had started as just sex with Ben. Then it was just friends with benefits. I allowed myself to care about him and like him. I’d even appeased him and agreed to bump up our non-relationship to a place where it was like we were dating, for a week, because I didn’t think it could do any harm.

At the start, when we started spending all our free time together, I hadn’t considered that I would want him, really want him, more than physically. We didn’t have more than a few things in common. We weren’t alike in personality or interest. We weren’t even supposed to be happening. But it turned out the physical was a gateway. I was pretty sure that the moment he made me feel something different while we were having sex was the first I’d ever had in my life with anyone. And I was so uneasy because I was pretty sure it was the same moment that I realized I’d already fallen for Ben.

 

\-----

 

The couch felt bigger. It was the only loveseat we’d ever sat on—it was the only one there was—but we’d never sat so close on it before. We only took up one of the cushions. I was practically in Ben’s lap. I could actually feel his side digging into my back. One of his hands rested on my hipbone, his arm wrapped tightly around me. Roscoe was in front of us on the coffee table having one of his many cat naps.

“You want anything?” Ben asked as he took a sip from the green bottle of Moosehead beer in his other hand.

“I’m okay.” I shook my head.

There were roughly six weeks until The Automatic Flowers went on tour again. For the last year of touring, I’d adapted a ritual of living clean for six weeks before any tour that was more than two weeks long—no alcohol, no caffeine, and nothing fried. I, along with my bandmates, found it impossible to eat well on tour. We indulged in whatever we could get our hands on that was a balance between tasting good and cheap because it was tour and tour was supposed to be fun. We’d accumulated a lot of memorable long nights spent drinking with friends in different cities. But the unhealthy road lifestyle on top of the travel was a culprit in getting me sick.

Being sick while on tour was the complete opposite of fun. So, when I heard from friends in another band that I could ‘prepare’ for tour by being healthy leading up to it, I started my ritual. I was only a day into my cleanse for the upcoming tour. It would be a while before my self-imposed ban on alcohol was up.

Ben spoke again, “Roscoe and I wish we could have hung out with you earlier.”

“I wish I could have seen you guys earlier, too,” I replied instantly and teased, “especially Roscoe.”

Tonight was the first time in a long time since we first started sleeping together regularly that I didn’t see Ben as early as I could have. An hour before I was supposed to be at his place I texted him to say that there was just too much going on at the studio for me to leave. I told him that I had to stay. That was a total lie. We had gone long in the studio and the final week recording was stressing me out, but I wasn’t even involved past the afternoon. Really, I’d been more rattled by the night before.

It had been so intense. I’d really felt something for him, which I promised myself I wouldn’t do. For the first time ever I was scared of sex. The sex we’d had wasn’t the kind of sex you were supposed to have at the tail end of a fling. It evoked emotions from me that I hadn’t banked on dealing with. The night before made me want to lie between his sheets and snuggle for hours. I wanted to have long pensive talks with him. I wanted to go on romantic dates. I wanted his Eskimo kisses and to get to know more of his romantic side.

So I didn’t think I could see him until I’d calmed down. If I’d seen him after dinner and if we’d had plenty of time to have sex like that again, it would have been the worst thing to ever happen to me. I needed the evening on my own to sort myself out. Now that it was past midnight, I was back to the reality that I’d always known. I wasn’t special; I wasn’t the first girl to fall for a guy that she’d been intimate with for two months and I wouldn’t be the last.

My reason for being in Edmonton and my goals for myself hadn’t changed just because I had feelings for Ben. I decided that the way to get over last night was to face it head on. If I acknowledged it, I could move past it. I couldn’t just lose myself and my ambition to someone else.

When I turned my cheek to look at Ben, our eyes met. He set his beer down on the table beside the cat. Then he wrapped his arms around me before he leaned in and kissed me. I sighed in his arms and ran my hands through his short hair when we pulled back. I didn’t think we’d be so close when I started the conversation to make sure everything between us ran its course exactly as we’d planned.

“Last night,” I began, “it was…different.”

“Yeah,” he nodded in agreement. “I haven’t had sex like that in a long time.”

“Me either.” I looked away from him.

There was another lie. I’d never had sex like that before. It was a first on a brand new plane of intensity. I was pretty sure it was like what people meant when they spoke of making love. I always believed it was just a myth, something actors said in soap operas, because I’d never felt that way before. Not with Rich, who I’d loved, not with anyone. Ben was always amazing in bed but two nights ago was the best sex I’d ever had in my life.

“You know,” Ben, out of habit, traced over my umbrella tattoo as he spoke, “just because you’re leaving it doesn’t mean…it doesn’t mean you can’t ever look back here.”

“I think that’s for the best,” I countered.

“We could stay the way we are,” he suggested. “I’d like it if we could still see each other sometimes.”

“I know what you really want. You’ve told me about the life you want to build. The future you’re looking forward to.” I reminded him, “We’ve talked about this. That’s not who I am.”

“Those things I shared with you are only ideals,” Ben said dismissively. “No one gets exactly what they want.”

“No, Ben,” I disagreed. “Those things you want aren’t unreasonable. If anything, all this time we’ve spent together, it’s made me see that one day I might want those things, too.”

“So why can’t we stay in touch and be casual and see what happens?” he wondered. “We don’t have to be exclusive or serious if you don’t want. And if you decide you want to be, I’d be there.”

I shook my head in disbelief. How could he discount himself so easily? That wasn’t fair to him.

“I would never change for anyone,” I told him. “I wouldn’t want you to change for me.”

Ben didn’t back down. “I was serious when I told you a few days ago that I really like you. I’d do us by your terms if it means that this doesn’t have to end.”

“I like being the warm body next to you. I have feelings for you. I really like you,” I confessed. “The other night, it was perfect. And it was perfect because you’re incredible. It’s because I like you so much that I want you to have all those things you want. I don’t want to be selfish just because you’ll let me. I want to be practical. You deserve a real relationship.”

Somehow I’d made him think that I was worth the trouble. And yes, I’d fallen for him. But that didn’t make us different people. Ben was ready to settle down and I wanted to climb the ranks with my band so we could play The Troubadour and Roseland Ballroom and Manchester Academy. Ben and I weren’t going to meet in the middle because we weren’t moving in the same direction.

“So I should be thanking you for leaving.” Ben smiled bitterly.

My heart hurt. I wanted so badly for our time together to end on a good note. It would be hard to salvage the next few days if he already resented me.

“You could tell me that you understand,” I said softly. “All those things you told me before that you like about me…I wouldn’t be me if I don’t go this way.”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. He blinked at me. He studied my face and touched my cheek. I got that sinking feeling in my stomach again and I reacted to it. I moved and swung a leg over him so that I was in his lap, straddling him. His arms went around my waist as he pressed his forehead to mine.

“Okay,” he finally answered. “I understand.”

I kissed Ben’s nose and whispered, “I’m sorry I’m leaving.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/62679805961/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


	15. Wye Road

Knocking on Ben’s door in the middle of the day was a brand new occurrence. There was natural light coming in from the windows on each end of the 20th floor hallway. The paint on the doors looked a little brighter and the numbers were a little shinier. No more than six hours had passed since I last saw Ben. He dropped me off at the ranch before he went to practice. I tracked bass for about an hour and a half after lunch and then my contribution in the studio was over (it was the last song, one of Rich’s songs).

So why was I right back downtown? The Oilers were back on the road in two days, and my band was gone in nine days, which meant that Ben and I were done in two days. But first the Oilers had a home game against the Chicago Blackhawks, the team that Ben won a Stanley Cup with. We weren’t going to have sex tonight, the night before game day, and tomorrow he was going out with his friends from the visiting team after the game, no matter which team was victorious. This afternoon was basically an insurance policy—to make sure that we slept together a few times before we couldn’t anymore. We were going to end our fling the way that we started it, fucking each other.

He answered the door without a shirt and with a pair of team-issue blue shorts slung low on his hips. I’d given his key back this morning, so I couldn’t just walk in. I didn’t mind at all though when Ben greeted me like this. He even had two day old stubble and looked like he was going to pounce. The rougher around the edges, the better.

Ben stood parallel to the wall as he held the door open for me and greeted casually, “Hey.”

I smirked and ran my hand down his abdomen before I slipped out of my shoes. “Hey yourself.”

After our talk two nights ago, we were back to usual. The sex was hot and the conversation was minimal. Ben traced over my tattoos until we fell asleep and we woke up cuddling in the morning. We were back in the safe zone where I preferred. Just lust. Just the present.

It wasn’t long before we were making out once we were further inside the apartment. The curtains were drawn to let in the sun’s warmth on a chilly autumn day and I stepped in front of the breakfast nook to look out at the view of the downtown core that surrounded us. Ben moved fast, pulling me towards him and cupping my face in his hands as our lips met. He walked me backwards until I was pressed up against the wall, kissing me all the while. I smiled into the kiss and accepted his tongue into my mouth while I swept my hands over the wide frame of his back.

There was nowhere to go. His kisses were demanding and hungry, and I barely had room to breathe. I liked it. Ben picked me up by my thighs, just under my bottom, and held me in place so I wouldn’t have to keep struggling to stay up on my tiptoes. It brought us closer to each other and I tried to grind against him in appreciation. That prompted him to tighten his grip and move the ministrations of his mouth to my neck. I closed my eyes and sighed contently, taking in the moment. If our last time was going to be up against a wall, I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

Ben’s hot breath tickled my skin as his tongue and bottom lip slid along just under my chin. “Delia,” he spoke my name raggedly. “I don’t want to break up.”

My eyes flew open. “What?”

“I don’t want to break up,” he repeated, moving away from my neck and looking back at me.

“Ben…” I trailed off because there were a million things on the tip of my tongue in reaction and I wasn’t sure which one to say.

He set me down on my feet carefully and then took a step back before rushing his words, “I know we’re not really together, but I want to be. I don’t want you to disappear forever. I don’t want to be casual. I don’t want to wait. I want to try this, us. I don’t just want to give up without trying.”

“Ben, you said—”

“I don’t care about what I said,” he cut me off. “This is what I really mean. This is me putting myself out there because I want to be with you.”

“Be with me?” I sighed and tried to pull some logic into the conversation. “We have demanding occupations, Ben. When would we be with each other?”

“Whenever we can,” he shrugged, like it was easy.

“Whenever we can?” I shook my head in disbelief and stepped away from the wall. “I don’t want to be in a long distance relationship. That’s not a relationship. I can’t deal with that.”

“Is it because you don’t trust me?” Ben wondered. “I’m not like the young, single guys in the league. I wouldn’t see anyone else and I don’t sleep around on the road.”

I shook my head. His faithfulness was the furthest thing from my mind. “It’s because of everything we already talked about before. And I already told you, I’m not going to change who I am or where I’m going. I can’t be the girl you need me to be.”

We’d already had this discussion. He told me that he understood. Now he was singing a different tune.

“Not once have I ever suggested that I want you to be anyone other than yourself, Delia.” Ben argued. “And for the record, I think you are exactly what I need. The kind of person that I’ve envisioned myself with, that I’ve groomed in my mind…she couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

My emotions bubbled up in my throat. He didn’t just give me a compliment. He gave me a confession. It wasn’t exactly out of left field since I knew that I’d fallen for him. I liked him, I had feelings for him, and part of me wanted to start something new with him.

But I’d decided to set those things aside because all logic led me to believe Ben and I wouldn’t work out, so it wasn’t worth the grief. Maybe I was impulsive and casual about hooking up but I was deliberate when it came to an actual relationship. There was a whole other person to consider, not just my own black heart.

I knew that our time together meant to Ben what it meant to me. He’d told me that much. He’d told me that he wanted to try with me but he hadn’t forced the issue. I thought that, overall, he agreed with me and he did so for self-preservation. If neither of us made a move then no one would get hurt.

He’d just rocked the boat. My nerves were shot. I never wanted to hear the things he’d just said. And now this was going to hurt a lot.

“How long have you felt this way?” I wondered.

“A while,” he admitted without hesitation. “When you started letting your guard down. When you started opening up to me. Every time you tell me that you’re attracted to me and you like me, I fall a little more, even if you remind me that we’re just a temporary, fleeting thing.”

When I started letting my guard down? It’d been a month since I opened more than my legs to Ben. It’d been almost a week that we’d amped up our non-relationship so that everything was real.

“How could you just keep your feelings to yourself?” I demanded, reshaping my initial question. “I wouldn’t have agreed to go on like this if I knew. I didn’t want to lead you on, Ben.”

“That’s _exactly_ why I didn’t tell you. If I told you, you would have cut me out of your life weeks ago. I like being with you, Mins. I didn’t want to spend all my nights sleeping alone if I could spend them alone _with you_.” Ben shuffled his feet against the wooden floor until we were face to face once more. “And you didn’t lead me on. How could you, when we keep reiterating how much time we have left? I just…I thought I could change your mind.”

His words cut right into me. The growing lump in my throat made it hard to breathe. “Oh, Ben, I…” I wheezed out without being able to complete a sentence.

This much honesty was more than I could handle. I didn’t want to be the reason Ben was miserable. He would be more lonely than when I’d found him and it was my fault. We were both so much better than that. He deserved better and I wasn’t that cruel.

“It’s pretty simple, Delia. I’m in love with you.” Ben took a few steps until he was close enough to reach me but kept his hands to himself. “I think you feel the same way about me, too.”

He wasn’t off base by much, but I wouldn’t admit to that. I’d fallen for him. If I fell any further I would be in love. Falling for him was troublesome enough, a part of me wanting him but a bigger part of me knowing that a relationship with each other wasn’t what was best for either of us. I didn’t want to fall any further. I would fall in love with him if I let him talk me into it. And I would be the one most hurt when it didn’t work out.

I could feel Ben’s stare, daring me to look up at him. He’d just dropped his biggest revelation, his biggest burden, on me. _Love_. The word was still ricocheting in my chest. My vision started to blur. The tears were forming. “Nothing is that simple,” I retorted and kept my gaze to the floor.

“I think you’re scared,” he pestered me. “Because I would be a wrench in _your_ plan. It scares you that the person who can even you out isn’t from the time or place that you expect.”

“I don’t want to build something just so we can tear it down. I want to be present for my relationship. But I don’t want to be in one place for too long. I love my band. I love being on tour. There’s no realistic chance for us.” I sighed and looked up at Ben. “We wouldn’t work.”

Roscoe was out of the woodwork of his favorite hiding place. He was at our feet, circling us like his territory and weaving in and out of the space as he rubbed up against our legs. The small animal was a minimal distraction, but not enough to ease any tension.

Ben wasn’t afraid to stare back at me. He blinked normally against the heaviness of our conversation. His eyes were as blue and crystallized as the first morning I’d woken up beside him. His jaw was set sharp and discontent. “You’re not going to change your mind, are you?”

He was right. I wasn’t. My heart was set on my independence and, at the moment, that didn’t involve rearranging the life I lead.

“No,” I whispered my response.

The bleak reality of my personal life made me feel doomed. My relationship with Rich had worked because we never had to commit to each other long distance. We’d been around each other all the time. We were so much like each other. I never had to miss him or worry about him. I’d never had to worry about anything in our relationship…until it started to fizzle out.

Ben was completely different from Rich and completely different from me. We were fire and the ocean floor colliding. I enjoyed his company and our time together. He was also under 30 and ready to settle down. I knew he didn’t mean it when he’d said the other day we could just go on, undefined, as we were. I’d been right. He wanted a full-fledged relationship. But how could I be in a relationship that I wasn’t going to be around for?

So I couldn’t be with someone that I was good friends with whom I was around all the time. I couldn’t be with someone that I was rarely going to see. There was no way to win. I was doomed until I decided I wanted a change of pace from my band life, which I didn’t see happening anytime soon. I was going to be single for a long time.

The expression on Ben’s face broke my heart and sent a tear down my face. “I don’t want to hurt you, Ben. Seems like I already did.”

He took a step back from me and shook his head. “So why are you the one crying?”

His question was the last straw that sent me over the edge. A sob escaped my throat as salty tears went streaming down my face in a hurry. I wiped at my eyes furiously and tried to keep composure. I didn’t want to be a crying mess in front of Ben. I didn’t want him to see how I could be broken down.

I’d been in a few serious relationships in my life. I’d been in exactly one serious adult relationship, with Rich. It took me half a year to get over what I lost when we broke up. I felt like it was going to take me a really long time to get over Ben. Maybe just as long. Ben wasn’t my best friend and I hadn’t committed to him for two years. We never even dated in the short time that we’d known each other. But he was him. He was what could be in the future. He was different than what I was used to. He was a romantic. He was in love with me.

Ben put his hands on his hips, accentuating the muscles in his biceps, before he spoke again. “Let’s not see each other anymore.”

“What?” my neck and my gaze snapped up to meet his.

“It was only going to be for a few more days anyway,” he reminded me. “Let’s just call it off now.”

Just because we weren’t going to be together, it didn’t mean I wanted to forfeit our final plan. A whole week of us being with each other for real—I still wanted that. I still wanted a proper send-off. We had two more days to at least hang out and be friendly. Ben’s suggestion was so bitter.

“Ben—” I started to argue but he cut me off as he continued.

“I don’t want to see you anymore knowing the end. I thought I could handle.” Ben shook his head. “I was wrong.”

He was serious. I could tell by the look in his eyes and his body language that he was serious. Ten minutes ago we’d been about to have sex. Now Ben wanted me out of his sight. This wasn’t how I wanted to end things. I didn’t want him to be upset. But now we were both upset.

“Please don’t do this,” I begged.

Wow. I was the one leaving him behind. I was the one who’d decided it wasn’t worth it to suffer for a relationship that was destined to fail. Yet somehow I was asking for more time before we ended our autumn fling. I wasn’t ready to be done.

Ben removed his hands from his hips and sighed. I saw his jaw clench for a second. His eyes of crystal blue bore holes into me. His hushed words cut even deeper. “Make sure Roscoe doesn’t get out when you leave.”

A gasp fell from my lips when he turned his back and started walking away from me, and then another when I heard the slam of his bedroom door. I didn’t have the time to react and try to stop him. I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. That was it. Ben and I were through.

I was standing in the middle of the apartment and he was just in the other room, but the message was clear. I couldn’t knock down his door, not for just two more days. There was not a kiss or a hug or goodbye. It was just…over.

The feeling was raw. My vision was cloudy when I looked down at Roscoe. He was still on the ground at my feet, rested on his belly, tail swishing every now and then as he looked out the window at the city. I crouched to the floor and he looked at me boldly when I picked him up. My bottom lip started to quiver when I was holding him in front of me.

I exhaled, willing myself not to cry again. The cat looked at me curiously before I pulled him in close. I scratched under his chin for a while, which I knew he loved, and then I kissed his neck.

“Bye, Roscoe,” I whispered sadly into his fur. He didn’t follow me to the door.

I made it as far as the building lobby before I broke down. I sat on one of the armchairs and the tears came in full force. Hell bent on ending our time together on my own terms, I hadn’t prepared for Ben to be the one to cut me loose. He didn’t let me down easy either. In my mind, I could still see the frustration in his eyes before he’d walked away. It was probably exactly how he should have treated me, but that didn’t make it hurt any less.

It hurt. It hurt all the way home to the ranch, sitting on the bus. Not only did I not get to end with Ben on my own terms, I didn’t get to end on good terms either. Nothing about it felt good. I wanted so badly for Ben to be cool with everything. He had been all along. He lied to me about the way he felt, but that didn’t make him the bad guy. He was just being himself—a romantic with a heart of gold. His fatal flaw was that he was a great guy who expected too much from me and I had to deal with the guilt of hurting him.

The walk to the studio from the bus stop was long as I tried to compose myself. I was wiping away more tears just before I entered the barn. The lights were on and I could hear voices from the live room. I made a beeline for the stack of our gear in the corner of the room once I was in there. My back was to my friends as I dropped my bag on the floor and went for a guitar case.

“Hey.” It was Anthony who was first to acknowledge my presence.

Without turning around, I responded, “Hey, guys.”

“I didn’t know what time you were gonna get here,” Rich spoke directly to me, joining the conversation. “Tony and I thought we would set up so that we would be good to go.”

Rich and I still had to play and record our last acoustic cover. I’d told him earlier that we would do it later, when I got back from Ben’s. I was actually a little early. Crying was no good for singing and I had the lead on the song. I wondered if Rich would be mad that my voice might be a little off. Thinking that made me feel like I was going to start crying again.

Internally, I told myself to toughen up. I strapped my acoustic guitar over my shoulder and walked over to the center of the room.

“I’m here now.” I strummed at the steel strings once with my thumb. “Just let me tune and then we can start.”

My gaze was fixated on a single spot in front of me but I knew both guys were looking at me.

Rich uttered my name gently, “Delia—”

“I’m fine,” I cut him off, but the tremor in my voice gave me away.

“You’re clearly not fine,” he pointed out the obvious. “What’s going on?”

I shook my head emphatically as tears started brimming in my eyes. “Just give me a minute to tune, okay?”

“No, stop. Just stop for a minute.” Rich put a hand over the strings at the hollow part of the dreadnought. “We don’t have to start right this second. You’re upset.”

“I want to play,” I said with gritted teeth.

“Uh, guys…” Anthony cleared his throat, prompting Rich and me to both look in his direction. “The camera’s ready. You know what to do. I’ll be in the house if you need anything. Just text me.”

Anthony couldn’t get out of the room fast enough. He hightailed out of the room like his pants were on fire. I was left alone with Rich, who wouldn’t leave me alone. Of course he wouldn’t. He was a better friend than that.

“It’s just us now, Deels.” Rich let go of the guitar and I picked up the monster cable that was placed on top of the stool behind a microphone before I took a seat. “Talk to me.”

My eyes did a quick scan around the room out of impulse, to give me a moment longer before I had to say my predicament out loud to someone else. Most of Grant’s studio gear was out of sight: covered up or packed back in its rightful storage space. The gear in the room was mostly ours, just what we needed for a few more days. We really were almost gone. After the album was mastered, Edmonton would be a memory. I guess after today, Ben already was.

“Everything with Ben and me is done. It’s over,” I told Rich.

My best friend took his own seat at the baby grand piano, which was the lone instrument of Grant’s gear that had been wheeled into the middle of the room for the song we were covering. “I thought you said it wasn’t serious?”

“It’s not. I mean, it wasn’t. But I…it…” I trailed off and pursed my lips. I took a deep breath. “It didn’t end well.”

“I’m so sorry, Delia.”

Rich was still Rich. He was my true friend no matter what. I knew because he showed concern for me when he really shouldn’t. I’d told Parker all along, and I’d told Rich recently, that the time I spent with Ben wouldn’t be a big deal when it ended. It was my responsibility to live up to my word. My drama wasn’t supposed to be a concern for anyone else in the band. Still, the expression on Rich’s face was one of sympathy.

“If you want to talk about it or, or if you want to talk to Parker, you can. Really, we don’t have to do this right now,” Rich continued, motioning around us. “The song can wait.”

Putting off the song wouldn’t change anything. Putting off the song wouldn’t help me forget. I had exactly what I’d chosen and I had to accept the fallout. Ben walked away from me before I could do any more damage on his heart. I chose music and myself over a relationship with Ben because it was what I thought was right. I did still believe that.

“No.” I answered Rich firmly. “Let’s play.”

**_Fin._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Extended Chapter Notes](http://jerepars.tumblr.com/post/64254802999/call-it-off-extended-chapter-notes) on tumblr.


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